Freedom Dreamer
by fringeperson
Summary: Harry went to the goblins and emptied both the Potter account and the Black account, which he had inherited from his godfather Sirius. With a little more of their help, he left England behind and was given the chance to start a new life... at sea.
1. Chapter 1

He shook his head, half his face hidden by his hand, as he smiled and watched his cabin boys picking a fight with each other while they were supposed to be scrubbing the deck. The red head was his own son, who had been fortunate enough to inherit his good looks from his late mother and his hair from his even later paternal grandmother, only getting his green eyes from his father, though he himself had gotten those same green orbs from his mother as well, so it could have been the dominant recessive gene or something. The other kid though... He'd taken him in when he spotted him by himself in a cove, building his own raft. They'd just left the town behind and were circling the island in farewell when he's spotted the brat. He was an orphan, and only three years old then, but the punk kid had already had a way with a blade that didn't automatically result in him spilling his own blood. Kid used his knife like it was a sword, though considering relative size, that was fair enough. When he'd seen this, he'd decided to teach the orphaned kid more about sword-craft, which lead to him teaching his own son as well. It proved to be a mistake though, as it had quickly become difficult to get them to do any chores near each other without a conversation turning into a sword fight. Still, at least it meant that they were practising.

"Oi!" he yelled down at them when he saw hands headed towards the hilts – even for kids, it was important that they be armed all the time when they were on the water. "No fighting until your chores are finished! I mean it!"

The two kids looked up in surprise before quickly dropping back to their knees and grabbing up their scrub brushes.

"Captain," a voice yelled down from the crows' nest. "There's land in sight, just off the port bough. Are we making for it or passing by?"

"Are you hungry?" the man, the captain, called back.

"Always!"

"Then we'll adjust our heading and make for their harbour, if they've got one," he answered, turning to the man at the helm and giving a nod.

"Aye Captain, we'll bring 'er in, never fear."

He chuckled. "My good helmsman of the hour, when have you _ever_ known _me_ to fear?"

That got the short, heavily muscled man to bark out a laugh of his own. "A fair point Captain," he answered with a smile.

There had been a time though when he had shown fear. A time that felt like lifetimes ago, and as his green eyes rested on his son and the kid he'd practically adopted, he supposed that in a way, it _was_ lifetimes ago. Back when he was just a little bit older than those two were now. Back before he had found his way into the Blues, back when he'd been the Boy-Who-Lived. He still wanted to strangle whoever came up with that sometimes. Why couldn't they have just pretended that he'd died that night? Why did they have to paint him a bloody hero? Then of course, the _last_ time he had shown fear was the day his son was born: the day his wife died. He'd been a pregnant father really, and the labour had left him so terrified he was had been swinging between unresponsive and hysterical. Suddenly becoming a single parent in a world where black and white were both so grey it was hard to tell them apart had really grounded him.

"Shanks! Mihawk! We're going to dock soon, so whichever of you finishes your half of the ship first gets a few extra Belli to spend when we hit the local town!" he called down to the kids, knowing that extra pocket money was the ultimate bribe to get those two to work faster and harder – because he did an inspection once they declared themselves done, and if they weren't up to his standard, then they had to start again, loosing precious time in their race.

The older members of the crew all laughed from their stations as the two boys started racing up and down the deck with their scrub-brushes, after the precious prize of extra money from their captain and father.

"The harbour is in sight Captain," a man with dark green hair and brown eyes called softly from where she was seated on the railing beside him.

"And you're telling me, why?" he asked, a little startled as he turned to look at her.

"Well, you were so lost in your own mind as you watched the kids down there, I thought I'd better tell you before I started screaming at the rest of the crew to start bringing in the sail, not that they need telling mind," the slightly younger man answered cheekily.

"Diego, my fascinating First Mate, would you do me the honour of screaming at my precious crew to do all those jobs that they know they need to do?" he asked politely with a suave smile on his face. They'd been teasing each other like this since they'd met. It was an old joke, they'd both thought the other was a woman when they first met, only to be corrected when they had finally gotten around to introducing themselves.

Diego laughed and swung himself off the railing, landing on the main deck with a _thud_ before he started directing each crew member to their stations.

"We've only been doing this for ten years," the captain murmured to himself. "It's small wonder that anybody still needs telling, apart from the ones we've picked up more recently of course."

Ten years. Ten years they had been mostly honest sailors in a world of crazy pirates and the often-times even crazier marine forces of the World Government, sailing aboard the ship that he had personally commissioned the instant he had found himself on an island he was able to completely circle _on foot_ in half a day. Thankfully, the people of the small town on that island in West Blue had been more than competent shipwrights, and had been very happy to relieve him of his money. It had been a very useful spell that the goblins had taught him just before they performed the rite to send him here – being able to convert his galleons, sickles and knuts into the currency of the world he found himself in. He'd been rich in England, but when he'd come to the Blues, he'd been shockingly loaded. Commissioning a ship had been a merciful use for a lot of that belli, though he'd still been comfortably wealthy even when he'd paid all of them with a generous bonus.

It was while his ship was being built that he'd met _her_, the woman who would die giving birth to his son. Bram Alice, who quickly became Potter Alice. She had soothed his heart of all the hurt that had been left by the wizarding war, all the hurt of seeing his friends being tortured or killed, and the burden on his own soul for having to hurt and kill others – even if they had been homicidal socio-paths. He had planned to sail this world with her, but she hadn't survived her pregnancy to see _The Freedom_'s maiden voyage. It had just been him and his son for the first few weeks, until a pirate ship had found them. A pirate ship ruled by a young man, just his age, called Gol D. Roger. The pirate had been so shocked to see a ship with only two people on board, one of them a baby. He'd been so surprised that he'd ordered three of his crew to help him sail the ship to Logue Town, in the much safer waters of East Blue, where a crew could be gathered. Roger wasn't going to pirate himself on someone in such a situation, and they had become somewhat friends in the month-and-a-half it had taken to reach the port that was equal parts full of pirates, marines and fishermen.

It was in Logue Town that he'd really become a _mostly_ honest sailor. He'd declared _The Freedom_ to be a merchant ship when the marines had questioned him, but his crew had been selected from the cleaner patrons of the pirate pubs. After all, he didn't want anyone on the ship who would be a poor example for his son. As for being only _mostly_ honest, they were certainly merchants, but they dealt in the goods stolen from the pirate ships that attacked them, and occasionally they would take a particularly uncouth pirate in and collect the bounty on their heads at the nearest marine base.

"Deck scrubbed Sir!" the two boys yelled eagerly, throwing a salute and him out of his thoughts.

"Is that so?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at his son and adopted son.

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"And the stairs?"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"And have you rinsed off the soap suds?"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"And made sure there aren't any puddles for the crew to slip in?"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"And you've stowed your cleaning tools?"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

He smiled. "I guess then, that since you have both been so thorough, and both finished at the same time, I'm just going to have to give you _both_ a bonus in your pocket money," he said.

"Thank you Sir!" the boys yelped, grinning broadly and rushing up the stairs to give their father a hug.

He turned and got down on one knee to accept the embrace from his two boys. None of the crew thought any less of him for being a caring parent towards the kids, and actually admired him for it, for not being afraid to show that he did care about those two kids. Most of the crew had left their own kids – if they had them – with family, back on land. These two though, their home wasn't an island, even Mihawk, who they'd picked up when he was three, their home was _The Freedom_, and it was a good home for all of them, even with the occasional pirate threat. Both of the boys, and all of the crew, had been given the chance to see their captain when the kids were under threat. In the general quarters, the men had agreed after their first time seeing it that someone would be assigned to keeping the kids out of trouble, since no one wanted to see their captain like that. Of course, Shanks and Mihawk, being Shanks and Mihawk, always somehow managed to get into the fray anyway. Still, they all tried to keep the kids safe.

"Captain, there's a couple of familiar ships already in the harbour!" the man in the crow's nest called down.

He and the boys looked up, and he smiled. "Looks like I'll be catching up with Roger and Zeff both today then," he commented to himself with a smirk. "Move lively boys!" the captain called to his crew, grinning. "The sooner we hit port, the sooner we celebrate with friends!"

The crew cheered and soon _The Freedom_ was docked, the entire crew spilling down the gangplank and into Cocoyashi village. The town may not have been all that big, but with two pirate ships and a merchant vessel, their economy was about to get a serious boost – particularly since neither of those pirate ships were the 'raiding poor villages' types. Particularly Commi Island.

"Harry-Oji!"

He turned and smiled at the little girl with the pink-ish red hair that was running towards him down the dock. He was also aware of his two boys hiding behind him when they heard the girl's yell as well.

"Belle-chan, how are you my little hell-raiser?" he asked, catching her before she could tackle him and swinging her up over his head. "Have you been good for Genzo-san?"

The girl laughed in delight at being swung around, and didn't answer until Harry set her on his hip.

"Of course I have Harry-Oji! I've been perfect!" Belle-chan answered brightly.

"The day Bellemere is perfect is the day I'll eat my hat," Shanks muttered to Mihawk.

Mihawk scoffed just as quietly. "Even if she ever were, you still wouldn't eat that thing."

Harry delicately ignored the banter between his boys and smiled at the little girl he cared so much about. He wasn't actually her uncle, but he had been somewhat adopted by the little girl the first time he had come here a half-year ago.

"How is your orchard doing Belle-chan?" he asked, walking towards the town with her, the boys trailing behind.

"It's great! All the trees have flowers right now, so the fruit won't be far away, will you still be here to try them?" the little girl asked eagerly.

"Maybe, but we're very busy with business my dear. Now, are you going to come with us into the bar and meet the pirates who are there, or will you go back to Genzo-san's?"

Bellemere screwed up her face. "I've seen enough pirates!" she said. "Before these two ships, our village was raided by a big ugly ship, with a big ugly guy in big ugly armour. I don't like pirates," the child declared.

Harry was surprised. "Not all pirates are bad people Belle-chan. Have either of these pirate ships raided your village?" he asked.

"No, they're paying for everything," Bellemere answered. "But I bet they don't always. Pirates are just thieves on water! When I grow up, I'm gonna do something about making East Blue safer!"

"Well, that's a fine thing to want if you want it, but what about your orchard?"

"When I've made East Blue all safe, I'll come back and the trees will still be here," Bellemere answered.

Harry sighed and put the girl down. "Alright then," he said. "I'm going to go and say hello to these pirates right now, so I'll see you later my little Belle-marine."

Bellemere nodded and, with a wave to Shanks and Mihawk, turned and ran off.

"She's a menace," Shanks declared, to which Mihawk nodded his agreement.

Harry chuckled and rubbed his son's hat into his hair fondly. They were boys and she was a girl, of course they didn't get along, yet. Someday, his sons would understand about girls, and someday, Bellemere would, in all probability, know how to take advantage of flirting and the male reaction – particularly if she grew into a body that could really back the attitude he just _knew_ she was going to have. In the mean time, he had old friends to find.

Gently, he opened the door to the only pub of Cocoyashi village to find Gol D. Roger and 'Red Leg' Zeff sitting opposite each other, their crews behind them, and an array of shot-glasses scattered around the table between them, and a few of Harry's crew scattered around on both sides. Belli was changing hands as well, and he smirked.

"How much have they had already?" he asked Diego, who was acting as bookie.

"They've almost had a barrel of tequila between them," he answered with an eager grin.

Harry winced at the amount and their choice of alcohol, but knew that there was no way he'd be stopping it, and simply waved for Shanks and Mihawk to come and stand with him as the other two captains reached for their next drink.

"Pay attention," he said quietly. "This is how you poison your liver and set yourself up for possibly the worst headache of your life when you wake up the next morning."

The two boys watched as Roger and Zeff threw back another five shots each before they started to shift, bored of watching someone else drinking when they weren't allowed to taste whatever it was they were having.

Harry caught the movement and smirked to himself before reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

"I promised you two pocket money and a bonus," he said, counting how much belli he was carrying – most of it was kept in a safe on his ship – and smiling broadly before replacing his grin with a firm frown. "Now, you two promise to stay away from the blacksmith, he's got enough work without you two begging him to make you swords," he ordered.

"Sir, yes Sir!" the two boys answered smartly.

"Good," he said, smiling again before counting out the belli into waiting palms. "Be back at _The Freedom_ by supper time," he added.

"We will Dad," Shanks answered with a smile. "Thanks Dad."

Harry however, waited until Roger and Zeff both had passed out on their thirty-second drink, and while the crews all cheered or groaned as their bets were won and lost, he took the two by their collars out the back and, once he was sure that nobody was going to see them, took out his wand and performed a very slight detoxification charm on the two. Just enough that they were awake again though, rather than sobering them or saving them from the hangovers that they had lined themselves up for. He was their friend, but he wasn't _that_ kind.

"Hello my friends," Harry said with a smile as they both groaned and woke up.

"Harry!" Roger slurred when his eyes managed to get enough of a focus on him to be able to identify who was standing over him.

"_Pott_-er!" Zeff yelled in rejoinder, grinning his head off.

"Well, you're both still piss-drunk," Harry laughed, putting his wand away and holding out a hand to each of them, which they were eventually able to grab and haul themselves up on. "And I can't be the only captain in port who isn't, now can I?"

"Fab-no-lutty sot!" Roger agreed heartily with a grin as wide as his curling moustache.

Zeff also smiled as he swayed slightly, beginning to head for the door that would lead them back into the pub. "An' w-when _you're_ as dr-_unk_ as we is, _Pott_-er, then -"  
"Then we'll be a trio of skunks," Harry interrupted.

"Skunk's good cookin'," Zeff remarked absently. "Bit sht-shtringy though."

Harry laughed and, with one of their arms over each of his shoulders, and him carrying at least half of their weight, they headed back into the pub to join their crews in carousing. It was just as well that having magic – and having been drinking butterbeer since he was thirteen – meant that he was better able to stabilise alcohol in his bloodstream, otherwise Genzo would be helping get all the pirates off the floor and back to their bunks by himself, and that just would not pass muster with Captain Harry Potter of _The Freedom_. Of course, Genzo was likely to come and join in the drinking as well, to help encourage the pirates to boost the small town's economy.

It was several hours later when he stumbled up the main street in the dark, heading towards the house he had paid for little Bellemere to have, and for himself and his boys to come home to when he was in the area. There were a couple of islands in East Blue that Harry had decided to build houses on, Commi Island here in Cocoyashi, and one on Dawn Island, in the centre of Fuusha Village. His home was really _The Freedom_, but sometimes he felt the need to unburden himself within four solid walls, a roof and a floor, sleep in a bed that wasn't rocking, or enjoy the opportunity to take some of the riches that he had acquired on his voyages and stash it in the rather large tunnels he had – with the help of magic – created beneath the properties. These places were his secret, and he had no intention of telling anyone, even his children who were all currently sleeping inside, about these places until _he_ felt that there was a reason to, as there was altogether too much money for anybody. He had spent a hundred-thousand belli on each of the houses, as well as the initial million on _The Freedom_, and then had stashed roughly two-hundred million belli underneath each of the buildings, keeping another ten million on hand for expenses as he travelled – like food, and clothes as the kids had needed them, as well as pay for his crew when he finally had one. He couldn't be an almost-reputable 'merchant' if he didn't pay his crew after all. The small hoards had grown several times over in the ten years since his first deposits, though he avoided counting it. It was really more like a retirement fund, or economy booster should the villages he had chosen ever come into hard times – or blood money, if he ever needed it. He hoped he never needed it, and even more, he hoped that no one else ever needed it either. Not out of greed, but just because he didn't like the idea of anyone being in that much trouble.

Setting down the small trunk which had been the reason for his stumbling up the street, and lowering the large trunk that he had been levitating in front of himself, Harry rested a moment before he raised them once more and headed down, out of the dark and into the blackness. Moving to the side of the black stairwell, he tapped his wand against the earth twice, calling up a string of fairy lights he had stuck there when he had been making these tunnels, and with the small light they gave, he was able to go down the stairs without falling. When he reached the end of the tunnels, or more correctly, the front of the stockpile of riches, Harry set the two trunks down and stretched a little, groaning in satisfaction at the way his muscles creaked and his bones cracked. He may have only been thirty years old, but that he was wearing his body out so thoroughly, and sleeping well most nights on top of that, it made him feel so much better than anything else in his old life – except for maybe those few moments when he had believed that he would be escaping the Dursleys forever to live with his godfather Sirius, but that was the closest he had from then. The day he had become a father had far surpassed both of course, but that had been rather suddenly tempered by becoming a widower when his precious Alice died shortly after she had seen her son's face.

He did a quick check of the locks on all the trunks that he could reach, then headed back up, turning off the lights as he went before shifting the house silently back over the entrance to the tunnels and heading inside to sleep.

When the morning came, there were three young bodies moving through the house as lightly as they could on the very tips of their toes. Bellemere carefully oiled the hinges of the doors before opening them, while Shanks and Mihawk followed behind her. The three of them may not have gotten along, but when it came to waking up their captain, they were all in agreement. The best way to do it was to tackle him in his bed. They'd tried dumping water on him once, but he'd just made _them_ air out the bedding. They weren't keen on a repeat.

"If I so much as _think_ that I hear you bracing to jump me, I won't get any of you a present today, and I _had_ planned to," Harry said, cutting the attack short even though he was facing the wall and the children had all still believed him to be asleep.

"Wouldn't dream of it Sir," Mihawk answered.

"Yeah Dad, you think so little of us!" Shanks added, a little fiercely.

Bellemere giggled. "I thought you _liked_ hugs first thing in the morning Harry-Oji!"

Harry laughed and sat up. "Yes, I _do_ like hugs first thing in the morning," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and stretching his arms out for them to attack him.

Once they had finished laughing over being caught, and had their morning hugs from their favourite grown-up, the kids and Harry had a breakfast of pancakes and bacon before Harry went with them back into Cocoyashi Village, intent on buying them those presents he had promised.

Actually, he had organised these gifts just before they had left Commi Island last time, approximately six months ago. It broke his heart a little bit, but he knew that his precious ones were growing up, and as much as he loved them, and they loved him back, there was nothing he could do to stop them from choosing their own paths, only help them succeed in whatever it was that they chose.

Their first stop was for Bellemere's gift, a long nosed gun that had a clip near the nose for a dagger to be attached so that she could either shoot or use it like a spear. Even if she needed to fight, he wanted her to be able to have some distance between herself and whoever she was facing. He knew that she was still only nine, but really, he hadn't been all _that_ much older when he had been facing a large three-headed dog and had his first encounter with a dark lord. Genzo would be able to supervise her training in this weapon when they left, but Harry at least was able to give it to her and start her off.

Their second stop was where Harry collected both Shanks' and Mihawk's gifts. Swords. Newer than the ones they had now, and larger as well, as he knew that both were going to hit their growth-spurts soon, and that what they were using would be too short for them. Not that either of these swords was particularly large or fancy, but they would the boys until they reached their late-teens at least. Unless they broke them before then, but Harry could only hope that _wouldn't_ happen. Those two swords had been why he told the boys to stay away from the blacksmith's shop. He didn't want them catching sight of their presents before he got to see them after all.

"Shanks, Mihawk, Bellemere," Harry said softly, seriously, as the three danced around him while they walked back up the street towards the house, and the orchard that Harry had helped Bellemere plant there on his last stop-over. "I have something important I want to say to you."

The three children snapped to attention before him with a sharp salute and a "Sir, yes Sir!"

Harry chuckled weakly and got down on his knees in front of them.

"Mihawk, Bellemere, I may not be your real father, but I love you both just as much as I love Shanks, which is enough by my estimate to make you my children as well, which makes us a family. Do you all understand what I am saying so far?" Harry asked.

"Yes Sir," the three children answered softly but clearly. They hadn't expected this kind of gravity in whatever was going to be said to them, and they were humbled by it.

"So my children, you are brothers, and sister, and even if you don't always agree about things, you will always, _always_ be there for each other, won't you?" Harry asked.

"Yes Sir."

"If any of one you gets into trouble, the other two of you will help bail you out of it. Even if the whole world is against you, you three _will_ stand together... unless of course you've become a raving homicidal socio-path of course," Harry added with a small half-smile. "In which case I should hope you would try and find an appropriate padded cell, and visit regularly."

"Yes Sir," the children answered, this time with a chuckle of their own.

"And none of you ever forget, however much of a grown-up you become, you can always, _always_ come to me for help with anything you need," Harry insisted.

"Yes Sir."

"Good. Now, you all know I'm far from the best with swords and guns, but Roger and Zeff agreed to lend me a couple of their men to help teach you how to use your presents here properly, and a few of my own crew are going to help as well. This is an excuse to show off to each other and get in some friendly practice as much as it is to teach you three some new tricks, so I don't want to hear any complaining, clear?" Harry asked, standing up with a smirk on his face and his hands on his hips as he looked down at his most precious treasures.

"Sir, yes Sir!" they chorused enthusiastically, even Bellemere who had just the day before said that she didn't like pirates and would go to join the marines when she had grown up.

"Then hop to it sailors, we're meeting them all down at the harbour. Most of them should have gotten over the worst of their hangovers by now, so it is our duty to be wretchedly cheerful as a lesson to them not to drink so excessively next time!" Harry declared with a wicked grin.

It didn't take long for the kids to show themselves capable of using their new weapons without damaging themselves, though the still slightly groggy crew members were occasionally a little heavy-handed or sloppy in their own strikes, but they were all properly sober and no longer suffering by the time lunch came.

"Harry," Roger called quietly to his friend, waving him over to the edge of the open space the three crews had been using.

"Something bothering you Roger? Beside the light of course," Harry teased with a small smile as he left off watching his children sparring.

"You're a funny man Harry," Roger said with a scowl before shaking his head. "No, I was just wondering how you felt about the idea of me stealing away your boy Shanks to be an apprentice on my ship."

Harry raised a dark brow at the suggestion. "I don't like it much," he confessed. "Shanks isn't even a teenager properly yet. Still," Harry continued with a resigned sigh. "I know he likes the idea of being a pirate captain someday himself, and I can't think of a better pirate than you Rog."

"Don't let Zeff hear you say that," Roger chuckled.

Harry smiled broadlly. "Nah, Zeff's a great fighter, a good captain, good sailor, but what he really is, really, is a fantastic chef. Cooking, more than anything else, _that's_ his passion." Harry turned from Roger to look over all the men of the three different crews, all the good men, his green eyes coming to rest at last on his kids. On his son right there in the middle. The smile on Harry's face gentled, softened, and became wistful as he looked at his own red-headed child. He sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his messy black hair. "I'll talk to him about it. If he likes the idea, then you'll have another member of your crew when you head out."

When _The Freedom_ left Cocoyashi Village three days later, Harry stood by the railing with Mihawk on his right and Diego on his left, his son Shanks on the dock with Roger's hand on his shoulder, grinning madly, and Bellemere waving farewell with both hands, Genzo standing behind her. Zeff had taken his ship out the day before, and Roger was planning to leave the next day.

"Sir," Mihawk asked quietly when only he and Harry were left waving goodbye, as the rest of the crew had gone to their tasks about the ship. "Bellemere wants to get rid of all the pirates in East Blue, and Shanks wants to _be_ a pirate. Will they be able to still be family, like that?"

Harry looked down at the boy, a slightly sad look in his eyes. "Family is family. Nothing ever changes that," he answered, his own voice soft. "On the other hand, what will you do with your life Mihawk?"

"I'm going to be the most dangerous blade in all the Blues," the boy answered firmly.

Harry smiled. "Then you're going to need a better sword master than me," he said fondly, "or anyone on this ship for that matter." Harry's smile didn't falter, but his brows furrowed as he looked at his adopted son. It was his puzzling face, the one he wore when something had just struck him as odd, but he hadn't figured out what that something was yet. The look cleared up before long. "You should probably have an impressive hat of your own as well, if you're going to be the best blade in all the Blues," he said, a kind smirk on his face.

Mihawk turned sharply, his bright yellow eyes lighting up at the idea. Harry had given Shanks his straw hat, and Harry himself was always wearing a small, weather-beaten leather tri-corn. He may not have wanted a hat exactly like either of those, but having a fancy hat of his own did have a certain appeal.

"Ahah!" Harry exclaimed suddenly, snapping his fingers. "I know just the hat for you Mihawk, come," he said, gesturing for the boy to follow him below deck. This action served the double purpose of pleasing the boy, and getting him out of the rain that had just begun to lightly fall around them.

Eagerly, the ten-year-old boy followed his captain down and through the corridors of the ships bowels until they reached the locker where Harry kept all the spare wardrobe – any item of clothing that hadn't been immediately claimed by members of the crew when they raided a pirate ship, usually due to size, colour or simply appalling taste. There were a couple of good pieces in there as well though, pieces which no one in the crew had the natural looks to be able to pull off without looking like they were trying too hard.

Harry went directly to a large cupboard and unlocked the door, revealing rows upon rows of different hats. Some were old, some were plain, some were strange, some were small and some were big. There were at least a dozen with flowers. Harry was waiting until they reached Logue Town to sell them, as there were more people there inclined to buy flowery hats. The hat he reached for now, however, looked just like the sort of hat that he had associated with swash-buckling musketeers when he still had no idea about magic, and had only had the books from his school to keep him company when he was locked up in the cupboard under the stairs. Some of those books had even had pictures, and Harry could remember absently wishing that he had a hat like this one back then, but now that he was older, he knew that his old tri-corn was as fancy a hat as his face was really designed to take. This hat though... _This_ hat... The brim was wide, but stiff, and curled closely and precisely along the sides to form a point at the font. The crown was slightly creased as if to make it easier to put on with one hand, and the thin band was the exact same black as the rest of the hat – though the underside of the brim was a rick, dark dusk-rose colour, and the single plume that was fixed into the band was pure white.

Harry looked from the hat to Mihawk and back a couple of times before he smiled and put it on the boy's head.

"It's the sort of hat that will dictate the clothes that you can wear with it," Harry admitted a little wryly, "but it looks good on you. It's a bit dramatic, and brings out that dangerous yellow glow in your eyes and emphasises your pale skin," he added with a smirk.

"Captain?" Diego called down.

"What is it Diego?" Harry called back, leaving the store room behind and heading back up to the deck. When he got a face full of water three steps from the door, he spluttered. "Never mind, I can guess. Stay below for this one Mihawk," Harry ordered absently before stepping out on deck and pitching his voice to be heard above the storm. "Get the sails in, I don't want to see where we end up if we let this storm take hold of us! I want _everybody_ to be wearing a life-line, I'm not losing anyone to a fit of weather fit for the Grand Line that forgot this is the East Blue! If something isn't secure, secure it, if something _is_ secure, _check_ it! And make sure all cannon ports are closed! I don't want the rain getting into the powder again, or the cannons themselves to start rolling about below decks causing damage! Someone set the rain-barrels open to collect! The waves don't look like they're going to be too big, I want to get _something_ positive out of this mess!" he yelled, moving towards the helm even as he gave orders. When he reached the raised platform, he tied his own lifeline, then reached to tie a line around the waist of his helmsman before grabbing onto the large wheel himself. They _would_ maintain their heading, and if it took two men to hold it fast, then so be it.

"Everything and everyone is secure Captain!" Diego called from amidships.

"Good! Now I want those who can to get below deck and start pumping! We've got an engine on this ship for when we've got trouble, and I'd say this counts! We're getting out of this bloody squall as fast as possible!" Harry yelled back. "Get Mihawk on it too! It'll keep him busy where I don't have to worry about him getting washed away!"

"Aye Captain!" Diego answered with a quick salute before singling out a couple of the beefier crew members and ordering them below to the engine room. It had been used before, but normally when it was a problem of not enough wind to fill the sails, rather than in the middle of a storm. This situation was a bit more stressful to the crew than that however.

The storm lasted five wretched hours, but eventually the crew of _The Freedom_ saw the end of it, a bit battered about, exhausted, and sopping wet except for the few who had been down in the engine room, who were a bit battered about, exhausted, and drenched with sweat.

"Gentlemen!" Harry called to his crew as they slumped where they stood, lines of rope still securing bodies to boat. "After that demonstration of your fortitude, I think you all deserve a holiday."

It got a bit of a laugh at least, tired and weak as it was, it was still appreciative.

Harry grinned around at all of them and gave a firm pull on the helm. "Our heading is Logue Town gentlemen!" he declared.

A grateful cheer went up. Most of them had family in Logue Town after all, and those that didn't have family at least had favourite pubs and/or brothels. It took a week to reach the island, but it was a welcome sight all the same. After that storm, the wind had been obligingly at their back, pushing them faster towards their intended destination.

Logue Town did, admittedly, have a fairly large marine base, as it was the last stop for anybody from East Blue who wanted to journey into the Grand Line, but the marines were less than stellar in their ability to capture pirates – on the sea or when they came into port. Still, as he had two very good friends who _were_ pirates, Harry wasn't going to complain all that much, particularly as they still paid a bounty when he brought in pirates who had attempted to raid his ship.

"Your boy looks like a demon or something with that hat on," Diego commented, coming to stand beside his captain and drawing him out of his thoughts. "He's been trying on everything black we've got to go with it too when he isn't doing his chores."

Harry chuckled. "He's just a kid, he's figuring out his style. When he's found it, then he'll stop spending so much time with his clothes," he answered. Looking out the corner of his eye, Harry gave Diego's current clothing a quick appraisal. "And don't deny that you spent half an hour deciding your own clothes this morning either. How many children do you have all over East Blue my friend?"

Diego snorted. "You're the one with children Captain," he said firmly. "I have supposed offspring, who will claim the name of Roronoa if their mothers tell them to, but I won't be called a father by anybody," he added, and Harry wondered if he was a little sad about that.

"So you've probably impregnated a different woman every year we've been sailing," Harry quipped with a slight scowl. "And will continue at that rate."

"Oh I certainly hope so!" Diego laughed.

Harry shook his head despairingly. There was no talking to his first mate sometimes.

Mihawk left _The Freedom_ in Logue Town, a wallet full of belli in his pocket, and a promise from an ex-marine to take him to meet the very best swordsmen in each of the four Blues, though the boy would have to find someone else to take him down the Grand Line if he wanted to go. Harry had talked to the old man before introducing him to Mihawk, a cautious parent to the very end. He didn't want to leave his child with someone who would be unnecessarily cruel to him. Firm, disciplining, maybe a little abrupt, but not cruel. It certainly helped the old man's cause that he was willing to go to piratical sword masters as well as the 'honest' ones.

"Mihawk," Harry called out to his son, stopping him just before he climbed aboard the small vessel that would carry him and the old man.

"Yes Sir?"

Harry chocked a little, just as he had when he had hugged Shanks goodbye when they left Cocoyashi Village. "The next time I see you, I'm going to buy you a sword to go with that hat," he said.

Mihawk smiled a little, his sharp yellow eyes becoming a little bit glassy with emotion. "That's going to be a very big sword then Sir," he answered.

Harry chuckled. "Yes. I suppose it will. I had better hear about what you're up to."

Mihawk nodded. "You will Sir. I promise. I'll find a den den mushi and call you even," he promised.

"You'll become so great that I'll read about you in the newspaper," Harry countered. "Where are you going first?" he asked, looking over Mihawk to lock eyes with the old man who would be taking care of his child.

"South Blue," the old man answered. "We'll have to cross the Grand Line, but I've done it a couple of times when I was serving, and I'd just as soon put off hiking across the Red Line for as long as I can."

Harry nodded in understanding and, with a last brief hug for Mihawk, bid them farewell.


	2. Chapter 2

Seven years had past since he last saw all of his children together, though only seven days had gone by since he'd been to Cocoyashi Village to visit Genzo and Bellmere. His little girl had become quite the young woman as the years passed, and had joined his crew in exchange for a lift to Logue Town, so that she could join the marines. She had been the one who spotted both of her 'brothers' in the crowd and dragged Harry over so that they would all be together for this moment. The crowd had gathered to witness the execution of one of Harry's best friends in this world. The execution of a man who was, sadly, dying anyway. He'd laughed when Roger had told him, the night before in the bar. He _would_ want to go out in style, with thousands watching and listening, rather than rotting away in a sick bed. When he'd been dubbed the Pirate King, Roger had been thrilled, and then had proceeded to live like any self-respecting King should. Harry hadn't been too thrilled about Roger's journey to the end of the Grand Line just to stow his treasure – his son Shanks was still a member of Roger's crew after all – but he'd understood why the man did it. One last adventure before he threw in the towel, and called everybody else to the sea.

Harry even had a part to play on this very fine and auspicious day. Roger had decided that, as he was going to be executed, he'd better make sure he called in all the favours he could before his limited time was up. In the bar, Roger told Harry that the world needed a thrill and a bit more purpose than it had going just then. Now, Harry stood with Shanks on his right, Mihawk on his left, and Bellemere to the left of Mihawk, as they watched Gol D. Roger climb the steps to his execution platform, just four more faces in the massive crowd. Mihawk had started growing sideburns, and kept them very neatly trimmed. Bellemere said it looked like Mihawk was trying to look like a vampire or something, and said he'd look better if he had a beard as well. While Harry had been far less impressed to see that Shanks had a set of three scars over his left eye. He'd admitted that it made his face look less like his mothers and more manly, so it wasn't a _completely_ bad thing, but he still didn't like that he had been in a situation that got him scarred in the first place. Both of the boys had been shocked to see Bellemere's new haircut – shaved at the sides except for two little bits that hung down beside her ears, and long straight down the middle of her head into a ponytail. Harry could only shrug his shoulders. Bellemere had done it while he was away from Cocoyashi Village and wouldn't be persuaded to change it.

"Any last words?" one the officers asked Roger.

The infamous pirate held out his bound hands. "Don't suppose I could get these off could I? I'm not going anywhere."

"No, you may not," the second officer answered sharply.

Roger shrugged and sat down, a smirk just visible beneath his moustache.

"Hey! Pirate King! What did you do with your fortune?" Harry yelled out, just as Roger had asked him to. "You left it in the Grand Line didn't you? The greatest treasure in all the world? One Piece?"

Harry's yelling had effectively captured the attention of everybody in the plaza, and their imaginations right along with them. Roger's laughter drew their eyes back to him. Oh yes, he _had_ to go out with style.

"My wealth and treasures?" Roger answered with a grin. "If you want it, I'll let you have it," he was just about teasing the crowd with such a promise. "Search for it! I left all of it at that place."

With his last words spoken, Gol D. Roger was executed. As the crowd burst into a great roaring cheer at the idea of claiming the famous One Piece, Harry knew that a great man had passed on. He also knew that he had a new child to care for – Roger's son, Ace. It would be a bit stressful to care for an infant again after so many years, particularly since a lot of his crew would want to see if they could make it in the Grand Line with a captain who would go after Roger's One Piece. A lot of them would probably be able to become a first mate for some eager fool. He would have to find a new crew for himself if they did decide they wanted to go to the Grand Line – and he knew that a lot of them were interested in going, just to see what it was like. Every single one of them were strong men, some might even be strong enough to captain their own ships. One or two may have even been so smart as to have saved up enough of their pay – or share, depending on how one looked at it – that they would be able to buy their own ships. After all, they couldn't captain if they hadn't anything to sail in.

Perhaps, with a new child to take care of and a new age of piracy on the horizon, it would be better to settle down for a while, only going between his two houses for a couple of years – he had still checked in on Bellemere regularly, but she was joining the marines. His children still loved him he knew, but they were grown now, and since Shanks hadn't even called him on the den den mushi when a pirate had raked over his eye, Harry knew that he was becoming less and less a part of the lives of his son, and his adopted son likewise. Bellemere would always rely on him as her Harry-Oji, but she was going to be an officer, and would quickly become too busy for him in such a position.

All the same, the next day he went with his two sons to the sword maker of Logue Town and, with detailed designs in one hand and a lot of belli in the other, he commissioned a large black sword with a golden handle for Mihawk, and an equally impressively sabre for Shanks – though what was impressive about the sabre was more along the lines of the quality of the blade rather than the blatant richness of it.

"Hey! Why does Mihawk get the cooler sword Dad!" Shanks had objected, loudly, and with a grin on his face that let his father know that he wasn't really offended. After all, Harry carried a sabre like the one he'd just been given – excellent quality and a bit over-sized. It would rank with his hat among the treasures given to him by his father.

"It has to be, to go with the hat," Harry answered, teasing. "Let Mihawk be obviously intimidating. Keep your own fierceness hidden until you need it, that way you'll be able to catch them by surprise as well as scare the living piss out of them."

Both of his boys laughed at that. No one else in all the Blues – at least, not that they'd met, and they had met a lot of people – talked quite like their old man.

"Besides, you wouldn't be able to lift this sword," Mihawk quipped with a smirk.

Harry was quick to lay his hands on sword-arms to prevent his boys from finding out just who had more skill. He would not permit a bladed brawl to break out in the middle of the street.

"Both of you are going to come with me," he said sharply, his green eyes flashing at his boys.

"Sir, yes Sir," they both answered sharply, their spines straightening in response to the sound of his voice giving orders, a habit that had been written into their very souls over several years under his instruction.

They headed down to the bar had had been named for its most infamous patron, The Gold Roger. It was a favourite haunt for Harry when he was in Logue Town, just because so many interesting people were there. It was a pirate bar, but they didn't discriminate against normal civilians. A normal civilian just had to be careful that they didn't fall victim of light and clever fingers hovering near pockets, or a cutlass that might appear at their throat or suddenly vibrating in the wall hear their face. Harry grabbed three glasses and a bottle of whiskey he'd actually sold to the owner of the bar the previous month – along with a few barrels each of sake, vodka, rum and tequila – then sat down at a table with his grown-up boys.

"I haven't seen either of you in seven years," he said, and it was clear to both of the young men that this saddened their father. "I sometimes get a letter or a call on the den den mushi when you've got the time. I've missed you, and after today Bell-chan will be a marine and I won't get to see her as much."

Having two houses and several hundred million belli – actually, it was probably a couple of billion belli by now – under each house, wasn't as interesting as having his children around. His little Belle-chan was big enough to go out on her own, and his boys had grown up without him even there to see.

"I missed you too Dad," Shanks said, ignoring his glass for a moment to wrap his arms around his old man. "Captain Roger was a good teacher, but he wasn't as great to just hang out with as you."

"None of my opponents or teachers were all that interested in talking outside of the battlefield or the dojo," Mihawk added. "I started talking to my own hat instead," he said, also getting up to wrap his arms around the older man.

Harry closed his eyes a moment as he relished the embrace of his boys, pulling them a little closer while he had the chance.

"Just be careful that it doesn't start talking back," Harry joked quietly.

"If you like Dad, I'll hang around for a couple of weeks before I head back to the Grand Line," Shanks offered, straightening up and loosing his grip on his father.

"_We_ will hang around before heading back to the Grand Line," Mihawk corrected, also letting go.

Harry chuckled. "I'm glad. I can see if either of you have learned how to cook properly yet, and you can help me get the baby stuff out of storage."

"Eh!" Shanks demanded, his eyes bugging out. "You're having another kid?"

"No Shanks," Harry said, quickly cutting off his son, preventing any kind of rant about having not been invited to his own father's wedding or something. The kid's imagination had always been a bit wild and incomprehensible. "I'm taking care of Roger's son for him, as he won't be able to do it himself, for obvious reasons."

"Well, at least you won't become a lonely old man too fast, if you're chasing the kid around Cocoyashi Village," Shanks laughed, relieved.

Harry shook his head. "No, I'm taking Ace to Fuusha Village. One of Diego's 'supposed offspring' lives there and is old enough to help me keep an eye on the kid when you two leave. If I went to Cocoyashi Village with young Ace then I'd worry about giving Genzo-san a heart attack or something."

"Ace?" Mihawk asked.

"Gol D. Ace," Harry answered in the affirmative. "I'm collecting the kid from the orphanage in a couple of hours. His mother..."

"Like mine?" Shanks asked quietly.

Silently, Harry nodded.

"Seems to happen a lot," Mihawk put in sadly.

The three of them drained their glasses at that, and Harry deliberately steered conversation to more interesting topics – like what his boys had been up to without him hanging around to keep them in line.

~oOo~

Harry was slowly unloading _The Freedom_ of the baby things, and putting them away again in the house in Fuusha Village. Ace had just turned two and was now too old for such things. Harry was just looking for a screwdriver to take the cot apart when a young man knocked at his open door. Harry hadn't had all that much to do with the twenty-or-so-year-old, but he felt some sympathy towards him. Monkey D. Dragon did _not_ have the easiest of parents, and Harry sometimes wondered if Monkey D. Garp was just a healthy version of his own intolerant and heavy-handed uncle, Vernon.

"Potter-san?" the young man asked from the door, not coming in. He looked distraught and positively haggard. "I was, uh, wondering if I could, ah, ask a-a favour of you."

Harry cocked his head and looked at the bundle in the young man's arms. "I'm all ears," he answered, flicking his eyes back to Dragon's face.

"My wife, uh, that is, my son, and, my fa-father, it's, I, the revolution, and -" the young man looked helplessly down at the bundle he was carrying.

Harry nodded in understanding and waved for the young man to come in. "I understand Dragon-san. I'll take care of him for you," he said, and moved to put the mattress back into the baby bed he had just removed it from minutes before. The bed had wheels, and it would be easier to take everything back to the ship _in_ the bed, rather than carrying it all bit by bit. It was just as well he hadn't found that screwdriver yet.

Dragon visibly relaxed. "Thank you Potter-san!"

Harry smiled a little and reached out for the bundle. "What's his name?"

"Luffy," Dragon answered, placing his son in Harry's arms. "Monkey D. Luffy."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Is there some significance to the letter 'D' that I'm not getting?" he asked. He'd known Gol D. Roger, was taking care of his son Gol D. Ace, and then there were Monkey D. Garp, Monkey D. Dragon and now little Monkey D. Luffy.

Dragon chuckled weakly and shook his head. "It's just a good initial I think, and all the Monkey's have been Monkey D. something, like a family tradition," he answered.

Harry nodded. Family tradition explained it enough, and there were certainly worse traditions families could have than giving their children a random letter in the middle of their name. Like forcing them to learn practices forbidden by the rest of the society for instance, that was a pretty bad family tradition. Or beating people up for being a little different. Also a really bad family tradition, one that he had experience in as the one being beaten.

"Well, Monkey D. Dragon, is there anything you want me to tell Luffy when he gets older?" Harry asked, pulling the blanket down slightly so that he could look at the boy's face.

Dragon shook his head. "Just don't let him become a marine like his grandfather," he said.

Harry laughed. "I think I can arrange it so that he'll have other heroes," he promised, a wry smile twisting at his lips.

"Thank you Potter-san," Dragon said. With a last, quick kiss to the brow of his baby boy, Monkey D. Dragon walked out of the child's life – and Harry's.

Harry looked down at the boy he was holding, a small shock of black hair on his round little head, and sighed. "Why is it that my real son is the only boy I've raised who doesn't look anything like me?" he asked the sleeping infant.

"Harry-Oji?" a small voice asked, a likewise small shape stepping into the recently-vacated door space. "Who was that man that just left?"

"Ah, Ace, that was Monkey D. Dragon-san. He's going away and can't take his son with him, so he came to ask me if I could," Harry answered the boy with a smile, and waved him over. "Come and meet your new little brother, Monkey D. Luffy."

"I'm a big brother now?" Ace asked, his eyes – which looked just like Roger's when he was being happy and carefree – going wide.

Harry nodded. "Yes you are, and I'll expect you to be a good big brother and take care of Luffy until he can take care of himself, alright?"

"Sir, yes Sir!" Ace answered, snapping a salute.

Harry smiled. Just like the other three. Ace had even snuck into the store room on his own one day and picked out a hat for himself. Harry had wanted to sell it as quickly as possible, but hadn't held much hope. Bright orange cowboy hats weren't in great demand. The hat was huge on the kid still, but he loved it, and Harry hadn't the heart to tell Ace to put it back once the kid had pulled out the puppy eyes. Still, he had demanded a fair exchange for the blindingly bright bonnet – Ace had to scrub every bit of wood on _The Freedom_ that he could reach. It was the same chore he'd given to Shanks and Mihawk for them to earn their pocket money all those years ago. Bellemere's chores for her pocket money had been to keep the house in Cocoyashi Village clean, which she had done admirably well. After all, he couldn't give her money for nothing, the boys would have given him hell if they'd found out.

~oOo~

"Harry-Oji!"

Harry ran to the side of the ship and looked out over the side. That had been Bellemere's voice, but what was she doing out in the middle of a storm?

"Harry-Oji!"

"Diego! Rope!" Harry yelled. "And take Ace below to Luffy!"

"Here Captain, come on Ace," Diego said, grabbing up the kid who had been helping secure ropes.

Ace was three now, and the storm wasn't too bad, so he was allowed to tie ropes if he didn't go too far from a door that would let him below deck to safety.

"Bellemere! Hold tight!" Harry called out, throwing the rope out towards the small boat where he could see his little girl, holding tight to a couple of bundles he suspected to be just as precious to her right then as she was to him. He watched her tie the end of the rope that he had thrown to her around the mast of her small vessel, and once she seemed convinced that it was secure – she gave him a thumbs up – Harry looped his end around a cleat and started pulling, wrapping more of the rope around its anchor point as it came to his hands.

"Someone get the rope ladder!" Diego yelled out as he ran back to his captain to help him haul the line.

It was a matter of desperate minutes before Bellemere's small boat was close enough to _The Freedom_ for her to reach the rope ladder, and then she was climbing up one-handed. Harry took the small burden from her arms while Diego lifted the slightly larger one from her back before Bellemere was able to pull herself over the railing and onto the deck.

"I'm taking these three below to see the doc, I want the sails and that _boat_ secured properly, and then get the engine going," Harry said, picking up his Belle-chan and arranging her on his back, then taking the hand of the little girl who had been riding on her back and tugging her along with him, the other bundle still in his arms. "Our heading is Commi Island and Cocoyashi Village."

"Sir, yes Sir!" Diego answered to the retreating back before he turning to the crew. "Alright you lot! The captain wants everything to be secured tighter than a fish's arse-hole and the engine going! We're going to Cocoyashi!"

Ace was waiting just inside the door when Harry stepped through it with his precious burdens.

"Harry-Oji?" Ace asked. "Who's that?"

"I'll introduce you in a moment Ace," Harry answered kindly, even as he worried. "But first I need to take them to see the doc. Can you help me by opening doors for me?"

Ace nodded and ran ahead. Really, the medical room on board was just down the hall, so there was only one door to worry about apart from the one he'd just gone through, and that was the door to the medical room itself. Still, Harry didn't want to have to jostle Bellemere or either of the little girls by opening any more doors himself. It was a slightly precarious balancing act as it was.

"Drake, you've got customers," Harry declared as Ace held the door open for him.

"Hello Doc-san," Ace waved, closing the door and following Harry in.

"Hello Ace," Drake answered. "Captain, what's the – oh my. That's not who I think it is, is it?"

"If you think that's little Belle-chan, then yes, it is. I don't know who the little ones are though. We would have been invited to the wedding if Bellemere ever got engaged."

Drake chuckled despite the gravity of the situation and lifted Bellemere off Harry's back, carefully shifting her to a bed.

Relieved of his largest burden, Harry was able to put down the small bundle he'd been carrying on another bed and pick up the little girl that he had been towing along and set her on the edge of the same bed as the bundle.

"Hello little one," Harry said. "I'm Potter Harry, the captain of this ship. This is Ace," he said, waving the boy over to meet the girl. "And the man over there taking care of Bellemere is my ship's doctor, Carver Drake. What's your name?" He had learned that it was polite in this world to give your own name first before asking for somebody else's, and he didn't want this little girl to think him rude.

"I'm Nojiko," she answered. She had hair that was a sort of blue-purple colour, and deep blue eyes that were a little red and puffy around the edges. She also had a lot of minor burns and scrapes all over her body.

"Bellemere's in bad shape and exhausted, but she'll survive until I've had a look at the kids," Drake said, leaving the young woman on the bed and moving to look at the baby instead. Bellemere got first assessment as she was dear to everybody on the crew, but the younger a patient was, the higher their priority. "Now little one, let me look at you," he crooned to the infant.

Harry noticed that Nojiko's eyes followed the bundle.

"A girl," Drake commented before sitting down with her at his desk.

"Is she your sister?" Harry asked gently.

Nojiko shook her head and looked back at Harry. "I found her in one of the caved in houses," she answered. "She was crying."

"She's not the only one who's been crying, is she?" Harry asked gently, taking a handkerchief and wiping at Nojiko's face gently.

Nojiko took the linen and wiped her own face. "It was so scary. Bandits raided our village and set everything on fire, then the marines came and started shooting the bandits, and everyone was dead but us, and I thought we were gonna die too when Bellemere-san found us and took us to the little boat, and then the storm came up and – and – and I was so scared!" Nojiko cried, throwing herself against Harry's chest as she started to sob.

Harry wrapped his arms around the little girl and hushed her crying. "Here now, you don't have to be scared any more Nojiko-chan," Harry said softly as he rubbed soothing circles around the child's back.

"Harry-Oji," Ace said. "Would Nojiko-chan stop crying if I go and get one of the my toys for her?"

"That's very thoughtful Ace," Harry answered with a big smile for the boy. "Perhaps a teddy bear? Would you like a teddy Nojiko-chan?"

"Ah, thank you Ace-chan," Nojiko said, smiling a little as she wiped at her face.

"Thank you Ace," Harry added. "And could you check on Luffy as well for me?"

"Sir, yes Sir!" Ace answered, snapping a salute, pleased to be useful. "If he's awake, I'll bring him back with me too! I know how to carry him!" the three-year-old declared before running out of the room.

"Harry-Oji, where did you get that one?" Bellemere asked, sitting up on her bed and looking at the door that was swinging closed behind the boy.

"That's Roger's son," Harry answered. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," she answered, then spotted the girl in Harry's hold and gasped. "The girls!"

"Well, this little one is taken care of," Drake interrupted, standing from his desk. "She's got some smoke in her lungs, which is bad, and she _might_ come down with a fever yet from being out in the storm, but otherwise she's alright. I'll put her on a breathing machine, keep an eye on her, and she should be completely healthy in a day or so. Now, Nojiko-chan, will you please tell me what hurts, so that I can make it better?" he asked, setting the baby down on the bed and slipping a small mask over her face and turning to face the older child.

Bellemere breathed a sigh of relief when she heard that and watched as Harry let go of Nojiko so that she could go with the doc to get all her sores soothed.

Harry got up and went to sit on the edge of the bed Bellemere had been put down on. "Belle-chan, what happened?" he asked softly, wrapping an arm around her back.

"I'm the last one alive from my crew. The girls are all that's left of their town. Harry-Oji, they need someone to take care of them. I want to be the one to do it," she answered, leaning into his familiar embrace.

Harry nodded. "I'll visit regularly to help with anything you need," he promised. "Being a parent isn't easy."

Bellemere chuckled. "You'd know," she quipped with a smile. "I hope I can be as good a mother to them as you were a father to me, Harry-Oji."

He was father to her, but she still called him uncle. Harry chuckled within his own mind as he smiled down at his little girl. She was a big girl now though he supposed, and she had claimed a couple of little girls for her own.

"So will you teach them to call me Harry-Oji, or will I be their Gramps?" he asked.

Bellemere chuckled weakly, coughing a little. "You're not nearly old enough to be a 'Gramps' yet, Harry-Oji," she answered.

Ace returned then with Luffy held carefully but firmly in his arms, and a teddy bear draped over his orange cowboy hat. Diego was behind him with towels.

"We're in this one for the long-haul captain," Diego said as he put the towels down at the end of one of the beds. "The storm isn't bad, but it isn't letting up either. I'd guess we'll still be in it when we reach Commi and Cocoyashi."

"Is everything secure?" Harry asked, accepting Luffy from Ace, who then went to give the teddy bear to Nojiko and talk with her.

"Yes Sir."

"The engine is running?"

"Yes Sir."

Harry nodded. "Then get everyone below decks. It's about supper time. I'll grab a roll from the galley and head up to take the helm. I want everyone to take a turn at the engine, that way no one gets too tired or hungry and we'll all get to have at least _some_ sleep in this mess. I want Josiah to relieve me at the helm in four hours, and then Fuller to take his place four hours after that. We'll keep that rotation at the helm until we reach Commi. Whoever is on helm when we reach the island will ring the bell for hands to help pull her in. I don't care at this point if it's Cocoyashi or Gosa Village, as long as we get to Commi."

"Sir, yes Sir," Diego answered his captain, then headed towards the door.

"And thanks for the towels Diego."

Diego looked back over his shoulder and smiled at his friend. "You're welcome Harry."

When they eventually arrived in Cocoyashi Village, Harry filed the papers for _him_ to adopt Nojiko and the baby girl who Bellemere had decided to call Nami. Bellemere would be the one who took care of them in Harry's house just outside Cocoyashi, and Harry would visit, but officially the little girls were Bellemere's sisters, rather than her daughters. Not that anybody would ever tell any of the girls that, Harry had Genzo's word on it, and the rest of the people in the village had agreed.

~oOo~

Harry had stopped _The Freedom_ in Logue Town to celebrate Ace's eleventh birthday, as well as to catch up – he hoped – with some old friends. For now though, he was headed to the execution platform with Ace walking by his side and Luffy riding on his back. Harry had decided that Ace was old enough now to know about his father. That the kid had been crazy set on going to the Grand Line and having a great adventure there since he was four helped bring the date of this story forward a couple of years. Besides, Ace was, for all his craziness, a very intelligent and resourceful child.

"So my father was the Pirate King?" Ace asked in awe as he stared up at the execution platform.

"That's right," Harry answered. "And he asked me to take care of you because the marines think I'm a one-hundred-percent good-guy, and he wanted you to be able to live your life without his reputation hanging over you. Roger was a good person, Ace. A pirate and a scallywag, but a good friend all the same."

"Harry-Oji, I want to go to the Grand Line like my father. I want to go right now. I'm gonna be even more awesome than he was!" Ace declared quietly.

Harry sighed and turned. There was only one place, one _pub_, where he'd be able to find someone intent on the Grand Line that _might_ take Ace with them, and that was The Gold Roger. He was still surprised when they _did_ find one man who both measured up to Harry's standards of 'role model for the kid' as well as being crazy enough and strong enough to both take him and take care of him – most of the good pirates had gone to the Grand Line ten years ago after all.

"Well, happy birthday Gol D. Ace, you're going to the Grand Line," Harry said with a slightly sad smile. "You remember to write to me, alright? Or call on a den den mushi. And if you meet a man with yellow eyes by the name of Mihawk, or a man with red hair and three scars over his left eye called Shanks, you remind them to call me as well."

Ace grinned. "Sir, yes Sir!" he answered with a salute, then climbed aboard the ship that would take him to the Grand Line.

"I'll see you soon Ace-aniki!" Luffy said, waving goodbye from beside Harry.

Ace waved back.

Harry walked back to _The Freedom_ with Luffy on his shoulders, a little bit sad, but proud of the children that he had raised all the same. It was just that he missed them so much when they left him behind like this.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry had never had any real ability with divination. Professor Trelawny's constant predictions of his death had rather put him off trying as well. He only dealt with tea leaves as he wanted tea, he avoided crystal balls, and he particularly abhorred incense. All the same, when the last pirate ship to try raiding them had turned up a deck of tarot cards among the various items _The Freedom_ had liberated, Harry had pulled out one of his old texts and done a quick reading. Tarot cards didn't require having the Sight to be able to use, and as he turned up one innocent-looking card after another, Harry began to wonder if perhaps not all divination was out to spell his doom. Then he'd opened his text to translate their meanings.

He'd bolted from his room and yelled for their course to be altered. They were going to Cocoyashi Village _now_.

He should have known that divination only brought him trouble.

The ship was a few minutes away from the village when the man on shift in the crow's nest spotted another ship approaching. A very large pirate ship, and one that appeared to be manned by fish-people.

Harry gritted his teeth and ordered everybody to make sure they had their weapons handy. He fully expected a confrontation with these pirates, even as he withdrew his wand to start casting spells to protect the ship and to hide it from the pirates' notice.

"Diego, you're in charge of the ship," Harry called as he tucked his wand back into his pocket and grabbed his sword.

"Yes Sir, but where are you going?" Diego asked.

Harry sprinted down the ship and jumped off the bowsprit, landing on the dock.

"I'm going to find the girls," he answered over his shoulder before he took off into the town. He was going straight up the main street towards the house when he heard Genzo laughing.

"So, coming into the village from the outskirts is called leaving home, eh?"

Harry abruptly went straight to the older man's house and let himself in.

"Why would you want to leave home?" he asked a little sternly, spotting the head of orange hair that belonged to one of his girls, a towel around her shoulders.

"Harry-Oji!" Nami yelped, turning and smiling up at him before getting to her feet and running to grab him around his middle. She'd grown it seemed.

"Nami-chan," Harry answered, sliding a hand between her arms and his body, loosening her hold so that he could bend down to her level. "Why would you want to leave home?"

"Bellemere-san is poor, she can't afford to take care of me and Nojiko. It would be better for her if we weren't there," Nami answered. "Having two kids is expensive, and because of us, the people in town don't like Bellemere-san."

Genzo chuckled. "So you're old enough to be worrying about others are you?" he asked with a grin as he looked at the pair. "Rest assured, Bellemere was a nightmare when she was your age too, when she was younger than you even."

"Bellemere-san was?" Nami asked, surprised, turning to look at Genzo.

"From the village's point of view, she's still mostly just a naughty kid," Genzo answered. "And we were all shocked when she said she wanted to join the marines."

"Bellemere-san was in the marines?"

"That's how she found you, Nami-chan," Harry answered, turning the nearly nine-year-old around to face him again. "Of course, once she had you and Nojiko-chan, Bellemere decided that she'd rather be a parent than a marine."

"You have as strong a bond as any real parent and their child," Genzo assured the little girl.

"Nami?" Nojiko called.

"In here Nojiko-chan," Harry answered, looking out at the elder of the two children. She'd grown as well, and it looked like she was beginning to hit puberty.

"Nami! So this is where you are!" Nojiko said, frowning at her little sister. "Bellemere-san's waiting for you. She's making dinner!"

"Ooh, can I come too?" Harry asked with a grin.

Nojiko smiled. "Bellemere-san's always happy to see you Harry-Oji! I'm sure you can!"

Nami cheered. "Yes! And I can show you the map that I drew! Bellemere-san says it's really good!" the smaller girl added.

Harry smiled. "Then I'm sure it is, I can't wait to see it."

"I'm learning to navigate too!" Nami said, taking one of Harry's hands, while Nojiko took the other and they all left Genzo's house and headed up the main street. "I'm going to draw a map of the whole world one day!"

"That's quite the ambition," Harry said with a smile. "I may have to take you with me around East Blue soon then, so that you can get started on that world map."

"Ah! Really Harry-Oji!" Nami asked, eyes wide and with a huge smile on her face.

Harry nodded then turned to look at Nojiko. "Would you like to come too Nojiko-chan?"

Nojiko shook her head. "Not me. I'm going to grow the best fruit on the whole island!" she answered firmly, more aware of the dangers of pirates than Nami was, as she could sort-of remember the day that Bellemere-san had found them.

"I guess you can't come out to sea with me then, if you're going to be so busy growing fruit. I'll be sure to come back regularly to buy fruit from you though," he said with a grin.

They were half-way up the street when the bell on _The Freedom_ started clanging out a warning and a man was running along the street and yelling that there were pirates coming.

"Everyone go into your houses and lock the doors, then go hide in your basements!" Harry yelled above the panic. "Do _not_ hang about in the street! My crew will fight the pirates for as long as they can, but you will be harder to defend if you make a target of yourself!"

Only some of the villagers started scurrying back to their homes, while others stayed exactly where they were, intent on fighting their own battles if they could. Harry bent to pull Nami onto his back and grabbed Nojiko's hand before he too broke into a run, headed for his house on the outskirts of Cocoyashi.

"You aren't going to fight them, Harry-Oji?" Nami asked.

"I will if I have to," Harry answered. "But I have to get you two to safety before I think of that."

Behind them, Harry could hear coarse laughter. It seemed that the amphibious pirates had gotten past his men. He hoped that none of them were dead, and was glad that he had left Luffy behind in Fuusha Village the last time they stopped there a month ago. The boy hadn't been too happy about it, but Harry had wanted the boy to take some shore leave and think about what he wanted in his life. He'd left all of his boys behind in Fuusha Village for a few weeks now and then, and Harry wondered what Luffy would decide to do while Harry wasn't there to keep an eye on him. Especially as he was just about to hit puberty himself – but the mayor at Fuusha had promised to give the boy 'the talk' if it was needed while Harry was away. Their course had been Fuusha before Harry had yelled for the course to be altered.

"Greetings, inferior humans!" Arlong yelled out. "As of today, this whole island belongs to me!" he declared, spreading his arms wide and with a horribly smug grin on his face. "And on this day every month, you will pay tribute to me. For every adult, one-hundred-thousand belli. For every child, fifty-thousand belli. Those who cannot or will not pay, will die!"

"Bellemere-san can't afford to pay that!" Nojiko gasped, having heard the fish-man's declaration.

"Don't worry Nojiko," Harry whispered as they ran. "She won't have to."

They reached the back of the house and Harry put Nami down, then pushed the two girls against the wall gently.

"You two stay silent. No matter what you hear, do not come around to the front of the house. You can go inside, but do not make a sound. Am I clear?" Harry asked.

"Sir, yes Sir!" the girls answered, parroting how they had heard Bellemere answer their Harry-Oji when he used that tone before.

"Bellemere, did you hear me?" he called through the window.

"Sir, yes Sir!" Bellemere answered, only just loud enough for him to hear her.

Harry nodded. "Good," he said, then reached into the opened front of his coat. Dipping his hand in to a pocket there, he pulled out his invisibility cloak and draped it around the shoulders of the little girls. "If you keep this on, no one will be able to see you, and you will be safe," he whispered, then pulled the hood up over their heads, hiding the very last of them.

Going around to the front of the house, Harry saw the mermen about to knock on the door.

"Oh? What's this?" he asked loudly, drawing their attention.

"Do you live here?" Arlong demanded.

"Sometimes," Harry answered with a genial smile on his face. "My home is the ship out in the harbour, but I own this house too."

Arlong grinned. "This island is now _my_ domain. You will have to pay me if you wish to keep your life."

"And why would I not just sail away instead?" Harry asked, pleasantly, his smile still fixed in place.

"What would you sail away _on_?" another fish-man asked smugly.

Harry's gentle smile abruptly left his face to be replaced by a deeply unimpressed, dead-pan expression.

"If you damaged my ship," he said, "then I will do my very best to see to it that you live only just long enough to regret it."

A ripple of laughter moved among the pirates and Arlong grinned hugely, displaying his many pointed teeth.

"Oh? And how will you manage that? You're a mere human, an insect compared to us!" Arlong declared. "Your life, for one-hundred-thousand belli," he insisted, holding out his webbed palm to Harry. "Every adult's price. Children, if you have any here, are fifty-thousand belli each."

"And what are you going to do with all that money?" Harry asked, crossing his arms and obviously not reaching for his pockets – for his wallet – at all.

"Accruing treasure is a pirate's favourite pass-time," Arlong declared smugly. "What does a civilian care what I do with it?"

"Not all treasure is silver and gold," Harry answered. "What do you want?"

"Pathetic human -"

"Harry. I am Potter Harry, captain of _The Freedom_."

Arlong smirked. "Potter-san," Arlong corrected himself arrogantly. "I will build a kingdom where mermen are able to take their rightful place as the superior species. After all, humans are weak by comparison, meant to be beneath us."

"That's really very narrow minded of you," Harry observed, a smirk of his own sliding onto his face as he subtly slipped his hand into the concealed pocket with his wand, the motion hidden by the way they were crossed over his chest. "Besides, I've always thought that it was birds who's natural place was above me, as they can fly."

Arlong scowled. Obviously not a fan of humour then.

"Arlong, the census shows that a woman and two girls live in this house," one of the fish-men said.

"That's right," Harry answered easily. "My Belle-chan, and her little girls."

"Belle-chan eh?" Arlong asked.

"Bellemere," the fish-man supplied. "Registered as single and never having children. Potter-san however seems to be the registered parent of a large number of children, according to the census."

"I'm registered with all those children in Fuusha Village as well," Harry answered, smiling genuinely. "My own son Shanks, and then I adopted Mihawk and Bellemere. More recently I took care of Gol D. Roger's son Ace, and now Luffy, Nojiko and Nami, all registered with me as their parent."

"Shanks and Mihawk?" Arlong asked, surprised. "They're well known Grand Line pirates with large bounties on their heads!"

Harry chuckled. "And they nearly never call or write to tell me how they're doing."

"And you raised Gold Roger's son?"

"Roger was an old friend," Harry said, nodding his head once in acknowledgement.

"Hmph, well," Arlong scowled. "It will still be three-hundred-thousand belli for the family you have here. If you can't pay it, you die."

"Is that so? Well, I'm afraid that, if you've sunk my ship, then you've also sunk my wallet," Harry answered. "And I never keep money in the house." This was completely true. He kept money _beneath_ the house, but he wasn't going to let these pirates get their hands on all _that_ if he could stop them.

"That's a shame," Arlong said, even as a huge grin spread across his face and he raised a gun. "That means that you and your family are going to die today."

Harry drew his sword obviously as he waved his wand more subtly and muttered a two spells of protection. One for himself, and one for the house.

"Are you compensating for something, with a sword that size?" asked one of the mermen with a snicker.

"No," Harry answered. "It's just the proportion that I'm used to." After all, he'd used a sword suited to a grown man when he was a boy, and had just continued his sword training with something of the same sword-to-body ratio when he got the chance – usually in secret and with a large stick, as he didn't have access to a sword most of the time when he was younger.

Arlong fired.

Harry raised, then slightly angled his sword.

The shot bounced and hit one of the fish-men in his shoulder.

"Tell me, who made that gun you are using?" Harry asked quietly. "Was it a human?" he continued, lowering his sword slightly and stepping forward. "And was it a human who wove and stitched the clothes that you are now wearing?" he asked, a horrible smile on his face. "Was it a human who printed and minted the money that you are so fond of? I think it was. I don't hold any grudge against you for being different to me, but you threatened my family, and apparently you ruined my ship as well. The second is going to take some time to fix, but the first is completely unforgivable."

"And what do you really think you're going to be able to do _anything_ about it?" Arlong demanded with a growl and a hiss.

One of the mermen rushed Harry from the left with their own sword. Harry caught their blade on his own, then raised his eyes to Arlong's face, and his wand to point at Arlong's chest.

"_Confringo_," Harry intoned. It was an explosive spell, he had used it to destroy a side-car once, and he knew that Hermione had aimed it at Voldemort's snake as well. The result wasn't much different this time as it was to those times. Heat erupted from his wand, and when the spell hit Arlong, the fish-man burst into flames.

Arlong dropped to his knees and screamed in pain.

His crew stared in horror.

Harry silently counted three.

"_Aguamenti_," he said, dousing the flames before the fire could kill Arlong. "As for the rest of you," he said, casting his eyes around the stunned pirates, "_Duro_," Harry declared, turning each and every one of the mermen into excessively large garden ornaments. He didn't _like_ using magic to win fights like this. He hadn't really done it since he'd left England behind and come to the Blues. "It's safe now," he called to his girls as he put his wand away. He'd find some ropes to tie these mermen up with, rather than using _incarcerous_ to tie them up with magical ropes, and then he'd release the spell so that he wouldn't have to haul seven-foot-tall statues of ugly fish-people down into the village. Of course, first things first was check that his girls were alright, and then see about his crew and ship. After all, he'd need to take this lot to the nearest marine base, which was on Shell Island, and he couldn't do that without his ship.

"Harry-Oji..." Bellemere said in slight awe when she came out the door and saw all the mermen that had been turned into statues, except for Arlong, who was still twitching in pain from his burned flesh. He hadn't even noticed the petrification of his crew yet.

"What's this I hear about you not having enough money?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow at his daughter, distracting her from the scene that was laid out on the front lawn.

Bellemere blushed. "Ah, well... the orchards haven't been doing so well the last couple of years, and Nami needed expensive books so that she could learn how to draw maps and navigate. She's very good though, see?" Bellemere said, taking the map from her pocket that Nami had finished just a couple of days before.

Harry took the paper and smiled. "Yes, she _is_ very good."

"Ah! Really Harry-Oji?" Nami's voice asked from empty air on the left side of Harry's middle.

Bellemere looked down in confusion. There were four patches of bent grass, each the size of a little-girl-foot, but she couldn't see the girls.

Harry laughed and reached over, closing his fist around what looked to Bellemere like air and pulling up, revealing Nojiko and Nami to her sight. Harry tucked the invisibility cloak back into its pocket and moved to pat Nami on the head, careful not to mess her hair any more than pulling the cloak away had. Already she and Nojiko were very protective of their hair, and they were only nearly nine and eleven respectively. "Yes, it's very good Nami-chan."

"So I can come with you on your ship and draw maps of the world?" Nami asked, her wine-coloured eyes bright.

Harry sobered. "We'll have to go down to the harbour and see if my ship is still sea-worthy. Arlong and his goons implied it wasn't any more. I'm also worried about my crew."

Bellemere nodded and looked around at the mermen-statues. "Will it be alright to leave them here?"

Harry nodded. "The only one able to move is Arlong, and he's not going to do anything but twitch in pain for a good long while." That said, Harry grabbed up the bag of money that the pirates had taken from the villagers and led his family back into Cocoyashi.

"How much money do you think is in there Harry-Oji?" Nami asked.

Harry shifted the sack a little. "This size? Probably about twenty-five million belli," he answered nonchalantly. "But don't forget that all this money was stolen from the people in Cocoyashi Village, so we need to give it all back."

"Harry-Oji? How do you know how much belli it is just by how big the bag is?" Nojiko asked, skipping up to walk beside him.

Harry smiled. "Because I often carry bags of money around Nojiko-chan, so I know how much space certain amounts of belli take," he answered.

The two little girls stopped and stared, their jaws dropping as a simultaneous "_Eh!_" spluttered forth from their lips.

"I've been a captain of my own ship for a very long time," Harry explained, stopping and turning to look at the children. "Pirates attack us all the time, and when we defeat them, I tow their ship in to a port that's got a marine base. I collect bounties, sell the pirate's ship, and sell a lot of the things that the pirates stole from other people. I'm very rich."

"Then why don't you help Bellemere-san more!" Nojiko and Nami yelled.

"I _try_ to give Belle-chan money every time I come to visit," Harry answered, shifting his eyes from the children to Bellemere, a slight reproach in his gaze.

"I want to be able to provide for you both on my own, without being a burden on Harry-Oji," Bellemere told the girls. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at it."

"So I just pay Genzo-san back for everything he pays for that you steal," Harry said, raising an eyebrow as he looked back at Nami. "_He_ is at least reasonable about these sorts of things."

When they reached Cocoyashi Village proper, Harry handed over the bag of cash to Genzo to re-distribute while he headed down to the docks to see about his ship and crew. Both, he was sad to say, had clearly seen much better days than this one. His crew had been slaughtered, and his ship's bottom was ripped out.

It really was a good thing that he had left Luffy back at Fuusha Village. He couldn't bear the thought of that kid getting killed when he was only ten years old and full of dreams and the potential to make them come true.

"So much magic in one day, after years of hardly more than a spell a week. I'm going to exhaust myself, but..." Harry muttered, rolling up his sleeves and pulling out his wand once again. Pointing it at his ruined ship, he used _mobiliarbus_ to get the pieces of it out of the water and onto the ramp that was used by docked ships to make repairs on. The two halves of his ship, the main mast which was broken in two, the torn sails, and broken off rudder – and all the valuables that were stored inside and slowly becoming damaged by all the water. He'd have to attack every single room with a _scourgify_, and possibly some items he's have to perform the spell twice to fix all that. First of all though, he had to let the ship drain of the sea water. Once most of it was gone, he cast a series of _reparo_ charms all over the ship. As _The Freedom_ wasn't a magical object, the spell was quite sufficient to get the job done. It just took a while, as it was really meant for smaller things.

Citizens of the village of Cocoyashi slowly drifted towards the sight of this magical working, awed by the strangeness of it. Even Bellemere's jaw was hanging open in shock. None of them had ever seen Harry do magic before, and he hadn't ever intended for them to, but that was the way things went sometimes.

"Captain?" a weak voice called, snapping Harry's attention away from the spells he was casting.

Thankfully, the spells didn't need his undivided attention once he'd cast them, or they'd be in a bit of trouble with those mermen he'd left acting as garden ornaments back at his house.

"Drake!" Harry yelled, running to his fallen doctor once he'd spotted the man. "Drake, are you alright?"

"I'm afraid not Captain," Drake answered with a crooked smile before he started coughing. When he stopped, there was blood around his mouth that hadn't been there before. The collection of bullet holes riddled all over his chest and the very large and bloody hole where his stomach should have been may have had something to do with this of course. "I guess we were all just getting a bit old and a bit soft from twenty years sailing in East Blue. Fighting mermen fresh from the Grand Line was a bit of a shock to the system. We dented them a bit though," Drake said, gesturing to a few fishy bodies hanging from ropes and railing around Arlong's ship.

"Will you _be_ alright, if we get you stitched up?" Harry asked, assessing the damage to his doctor frantically.

"I -" Drake was interrupted by his own coughing again. There was more blood. "I somehow doubt it," he said. "Diego though, he's – he's only lost an arm and a leg. He's close to having bled out, but you might be able to save him."

"I don't want saving," Diego's voice growled out lowly from the water's edge. "If I've only one of each limb when I'm s'posed t' have _two_. I'd be useless. I couldn't bear to be useless."

"Bellemere! Take Drake up! I'm bringing Diego!" Harry called.

"Sir, yes Sir!" Bellemere snapped sharply, carefully picking up the older man and carrying him back into Cocoyashi, the village physician running ahead of her to get the surgery ready.

Harry picked up his friend and first mate and quickly followed. The ship could wait. Lives could not. "I need someone to search my crew for any more survivors, and people to bring them to the surgery if there are any," Harry said to Genzo as he passed the man.

Genzo nodded and with a wave to a few of the men, the search began.

The final count wasn't good, but it wasn't as bad as it had looked at first glance either – considering that first glance had shown _everyone_ as dead, even one alive was better. As well as Drake and Diego, Fuller, one of his helmsmen, was found still alive, as was one of the fore-mast hands, a man who went by the name of Yash. Fuller had lost his right hand and left eye. Yash had been cut off at the knees by his attacker. Harry would be carrying a lot of bodies back to their home villages in the coming months, as well as taking Fuller and Yash back to their home villages. Drake was only going to survive this if he was very lucky, and even then several of the villagers were wondering if the doctor mightn't be luckier to die soon, so that he wouldn't feel any more pain. As for Diego, Harry worried that if he left his first mate unsupervised then the man would find a way to kill himself so that he didn't have to live as an amputee, or as one of those clichéd sailors with a peg-leg and a hook in place of a lost hand.

Unfortunately, Harry didn't have any of the ingredients for making the sorts of potions that would restore lost limbs to his friends, and even if he had, those sorts of potions were beyond his skill level. His aptitude for cooking had not transferred over to making potions under the critical eye of a detestable potions master. If Snape had at least treated him with complete indifference, rather than his marked distaste, Harry suspected he would have been better at the discipline, not that such speculation did him any good now of course.

"I'm sorry my friend, but it looks like you're going to have to concede to a wooden leg," Harry said as he sat beside Diego while the doctor wrapped gauze around what would eventually heal enough to become a stump.

"I don't want a bloody peg leg," Diego growled.

"No reason it should be a peg," Harry answered. "Should be able to make a wooden foot to go on the end of the wooden leg, and maybe even have some springs at the joint so that you can use it like a regular foot – with practice of course. If you wear a pair of high boots, then no one will know."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Diego grumbled, utterly unconvinced.

Harry chuckled and patted his friend on the shoulder. "You'll walk again my friend. You'll see."

He didn't though. While Harry was down at the harbour lifting shattered ships out of the water and repairing them using magic – and while various backs in the surgery were turned, busy doing other jobs – Diego had found a blade and rammed it through his own heart, killing himself, just as Harry had feared he somehow would.

Diego was buried on Commi Island. The green-haired man had never claimed a home island in all the time he had sailed with _The Freedom_, but he had always liked Cocoyashi Village when they visited the place. Harry had sometimes suspected that this because there weren't any green-haired children running around that could have been his progeny, but he'd never get the chance to ask now.

"Nothing good ever came from divination," Harry said quietly as he stood alone on a point that overlooked the sea. The mermen were all tied up, including Arlong, and their ship was attached to _The Freedom_ by a tow-line. Harry was planning on leaving Cocoyashi in the morning. All of the ships in the harbour had been fixed up, and he'd put his dead crew members into the cold-store on his ship so that he could take them back to their homes without having to worry about them rotting. Drake had died and was in there with them as well.

Bellemere, Nojiko and Nami were all coming with him for this voyage. Bellemere was going to help run the ship until he got a new crew, while Nami would begin to apply the lessons from her books about cartography and navigation. Nojiko had decided that she wouldn't be left behind with just Gen-san and was therefore coming too. Harry hoped that she caught the sailing bug and decided to stay on. It was nice having the girls travel with him.

As soon as Arlong, his ship, and his crew were in the hands of the marines, and their bounty in Harry's possession, _The Freedom_ headed to Fuusha village to collect Luffy – stopping at every relevant island along the way to leave dead crew members with their families.

"Captain!" Nojiko called down from the crow's nest, where she had been allowed to have duty in the pleasant weather. "There's a pirate ship in the harbour!"

"Will I make ready the canons Sir?" Bellemere asked.

"You most certainly will not," Harry answered firmly. "We do _not_ attack pirates unprovoked on this ship Belle-chan. I'm friends with too many, remember?"

Bellemere blushed at having been caught out thinking like a marine when she wasn't one any more.

In fifteen minutes, they were docked, and Harry lowered the gangplank for the little girls to walk down, rather than the rope ladder.

"It's Potter-san!" an older, male voice yelled happily. The mayor of the town, a man called Woop Slap. "Potter-san! Shanks-san is in the bar telling stories of the Grand Line to Luffy!"

Harry stopped short as he was about to start walking down the gangplank himself. His son. His son was back from the Grand Line. Harry startled everyone watching by turning in a circle where he stood, making a vague hand gesture, and disappearing with a pop. Harry reappeared, apparated, an instant later just outside the door of the bar – where one of Diego's many possible progeny was working, a girl by the name of Makino – and silently walked in, his green eyes wide and fixed on the head of red hair he could see at the bar on the other side of the room. On the bar beside this man's drink was a straw hat with a bright red band. Luffy was sitting beside this man, and appeared to be drinking up every word he said like a thirsty man who just found water in the desert.

Harry came to a stop at last, just two feet directly behind the man, who had not stopped talking to the almost-teen-aged and very impressionable boy.

"Shanks," Harry breathed out.

"Huh?" the man said, turning slightly to look over his shoulder and see who had called his name.

"Harry-Oji! This is Shanks-san! He's a pirate! He's really cool! He was telling me about the Grand Line and how he used to sail with Gold Roger, the Pirate King! Shanks-san, this is Harry-Oji," Luffy said clearly excited.

Neither of the men appeared to hear the boy, though the words did reach their ears.

"Dad," Shanks said, turning properly and getting up off his stool.

"Shanks," Harry said again, his green eyes glassing slightly at finally seeing his son again after so many years. "Got a hug for your old man?" he asked tentatively with a hopeful smile as he raised his arms for that hug.

The entire bar had gone silent, and all eyes were on the pair. Luffy's were especially wide at this new information. The super-cool pirate, Captain Shanks, was Harry-Oji's _son_!

"In front of my whole _crew_, Dad?" Shanks asked, a weak but wry smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

Harry's smile fell, as did his outstretched arms.

Shanks grinned and quickly caught his father up in a bear-hug.

"I missed you Dad."

"Oh Shanks, my own son, I missed you so _much_," Harry said, tears escaping to run down his face as he brought his hands up to clutch at his baby, his boy, his child who had grown up and become a man. After a few minutes of simply holding each other, a few minutes for which the crew had remained silent as they just watched, Harry and Shanks eased their holds on each other and Harry was able to really take in what had changed about his son since he had last seen him. "That's an interesting attempt at a beard you've got there," Harry said at last as he wiped his face with the back of his hand.

Shanks laughed. "Well, you're always telling me that I've got my mother's face. I have to do something to make it more manly, right?" he joked.

Harry laughed as well. "Yes, I suppose so. How long will you be in East Blue? Dare I hope you're back to stay?"

Shanks shook his head. "A few months at most," he answered, gesturing for his father to sit with him at the bar. "We were planning on leaving Fuusha the day after tomorrow, maybe drop by Commi Island."

"Commi has had enough pirates to last it for quite a while thank _you_," a female voice snapped from the knee-height at the door.

"Now Nojiko, can't you be polite? My son only meant that he intended to visit Bellemere and tease her about her hair-cut," Harry said, looking over at the door.

"Shanks!" Bellemere yelped happily, a grin on her face as she ran into the bar and tackled him. "I didn't know you were back in East Blue!"

"If you'd known, it wouldn't have been a surprise visit," Shanks gasped out, his crew now laughing at him as he tried to get Bellemere to ease off on her choke-hold of him. "What are you doing here?"

Bellemere's smile faded instantly. "Someone had to help Harry-Oji get _The Freedom_ back here, since Arlong showed up at Cocoyashi and killed all of the crew," Bellemere answered.

Shanks' face dropped and displayed open horror. "Even Diego?" he asked.

"Diego killed himself," Harry answered. "They'd cut off an arm and a leg. He didn't want to keep on living if he couldn't be whole."

Shanks bowed his head in sorrow. He'd really liked Diego.

"Nojiko, Nami, come in here and meet Shanks-san," Bellemere called, waving over the two little girls who were still standing in the doorway.

Nojiko crossed her arms and frowned. "No. He's a pirate. Pirates killed Harry-Oji's crew," the blue-haired girl said stubbornly.

"Nojiko," Harry said, a slight edge to his voice.

The girl's head dropped and her fists clenched, but she did as she was told. Nami stayed beside her sister all the way in, nervous around all the strangers. She couldn't remember having ever been outside of Cocoyashi Village until just recently, and it was all new and a bit unnerving.

"Hi Nojiko-chan! Hi Nami-chan!" Luffy said loudly with an excited wave. He'd gotten to meet them a few times before thanks to Harry-Oji taking him with him on _The Freedom_.

The two girls smiled at the sight of the boy, who they knew and recognised, even if he had gotten taller since the last time he had visited them at Cocoyashi Village. "Luffy-kun!" they both exclaimed happily, running up to him and sitting up at the bar next to him.

Harry asked for juice for the girls and, upon being told that all the booze in the bar was out, asked for a couple of glasses so that he and Bellemere could share the bottle of sake that Shanks had been just about to open.

Harry was just pouring for the three of them when the door was kicked in, literally and rather excessively, by a tall and scruffy-looking bandit. Once again, the bar went quiet, but this time it was for a very different reason. Wariness and watchfulness, rather than respect.

"I want twelve barrels of sake for my men. We're very thirsty," the bandit said, gesturing to a gang of equally scruffy-looking men who were smirking as they stood in the broken door.

"I'm afraid that all that we have is out here right now," Makino answered, a little nervously, as she gestured vaguely to indicate the room in general, where all the pirates were.

"Sorry about that," Shanks said. "But we seem to have drunk everything. I just opened the last bottle too."

The bandit abruptly brought his sword out and held it level with Shanks' eyes. Bellemere was the one who blatantly watched the blade however, as did Luffy and the girls. Shanks paid the blade no mind.

"Even if there were alcohol here, would you have _paid_ for it?" Harry asked, almost casually, but with an iron edge to his voice as he glanced at the blade from the corner of his eye.

"I'm Higuma the Bandit, worth eight-million belli! I _take_ what I want and no one can stop me!" the tall, scruffy leader of the bandits answered fiercely.

Harry raised an eyebrow and shoved a hand into one of the pockets on his coat – the 'undetectable extension charm' he had put on his pockets was really quite useful sometimes – and fished around until he got his hands on the bounty papers he had accrued over the years.

"Higuma the Bandit," he mused quietly. "Higuma, Higuma, H for Higuma. Ah, here it is!" he declared, lifting a paper free of the others. "You're just as ugly as your reward posters by the way," Harry commented off-handedly before getting to the price. "No, I think you may have imagined a few extra zero's on the end of your bounty Higuma-san. It says here that you're only worth eight-_hundred_, not eight-_million_. Which makes you _very_ small fry indeed."

Bellemere laughed first, and Shanks chocked on a chuckle, before the kids caught on and burst out laughing as well, which sparked loud guffaws among the pirates.

Higuma struck out then, turning his sword so that it no longer threatened Shanks, but so that it would hurt Harry. Would have – if his glasses weren't in the way and rather stubborn about not breaking thanks to all the spells that he'd put on them over the years to make sure he never had to worry about such annoying problems as losing or breaking them ever again.

Shanks stood abruptly then and slammed the hilt of his sword into Higuma's stomach.

"You do _not_ threaten my family," Shanks growled out as he stood over the gasping bandit.

Harry chuckled. "Now really Shanks, I'm the one who's supposed to be protective of _you_, not the other way around," he said, smiling as he grabbed the bandit's collar and threw him back out the door to his gang. "If you can't _pay_ for your cheer, then go find it somewhere else," he instructed them with a growl.

The petty bandits gulped and carried their leader away as quickly as they could.

"So _cool_!" Luffy declared, waving his arms around as Harry and Shanks sat back down. "Shanks, can I join your crew?"

"Nah, I don't take kids into the Grand Line," Shanks answered, sticking out his tongue.

"But I'm not a kid!"

"Here, have some juice."

"Oh, thank you!"

Shanks laughed and slapped his hand against the bar. "Such a kid!" he yelled happily.

Luffy pouted and turned away. Looking slightly up the bar, he saw a strange looking fruit sitting in a box and grabbed it to eat.

"What are you doing Luffy-chan?" Nojiko asked, eyes wide.

"Doesn't that belong to Shanks-san?" Nami added, staring as well.

"Eh? What's he doing?" Shanks asked, turning back to look at Luffy. "Ah! Spit it out this instant!" Shanks yelled, grabbing Luffy by the ankles and shaking him upside-down. "Spit it out! Spit it all out or-"

Luffy's legs stretched and his face hit the floor before he bounced back.

Nami and Nojiko stared, and Luffy's eyes were wide in shock as well.

"W-what was that?" Luffy asked.

"That was a devil fruit that makes you a rubber man," Shanks answered in a slightly high-pitched yell. "And anyone who eats a devil fruit becomes a dead weight in the water. You'll never be able to swim again!"

"_Eh_!" Luffy yelled, horrified at the idea. "But I wanna be a pirate!"

Harry shook his head at the kid, a smile on his face. "You still can be Luffy," he assured the boy, taking him from Shanks' hold and setting him on a stool. "You'll just have to be aware that you won't be able to swim any more."

Hours later, when the kids were tucked up in bed in Harry's Fuusha house with Bellemere in the same room to watch over them, and the members of Shanks' crew were sprawled on just about every surface, sleeping off their booze, Harry sat up with his son in the kitchen.

"Zeff's back in East Blue as well," Shanks said, accepting a glass of water from his father and drinking it down quickly. "I think he is anyway."

"I'll have to track him down soon then," Harry said with a smile. "Zeff's got a bad habit of moving about."

Shanks nodded and poured some more water from the jug on the table into his glass. He swilled the liquid around a moment before looking up at his father. "Dad, have you ever thought of going into the Grand Line?"

Harry chuckled softly. "Shanks, you were born in West Blue," Harry said with a smile. "I had to go through the Grand Line to get here. I'd always intended to start off easy and work my way up through the danger-levels of the Blues and then go into the Grand Line, but kids that needed taking care of kept on showing up, so I never left East Blue."

"Come with me this time Dad," Shanks asked, grabbing Harry's hand, his eyes, those green eyes he's inherited from his father, aflame with hope and anticipation. "Come with me to the Grand Line. Luffy is almost as old as I was when I went into the Grand Line with Roger, if you want to bring him with us. Bellemere's grown up and got her own little girls, and she's clearly managing to take care of them. If you want to bring all of them as well, I'm sure we'd be able to keep the girls safe until they learned how to defend themselves. Dad, please?"

Harry chuckled. "You really want an old man on your crew? A man who's been used to being the captain of his own ship? Who _you're_ used to taking orders from?" he asked with a smile. "I don't see your crew really going for that."

"Aw, you're not that old Dad. Come on, please? We could start a fleet, rather than having two captains on one ship getting on each other's toes," Shanks suggested.

"We'll have to make a few stops first," Harry said, caving in to his son's pleas. "To Cocoyashi for one, and I want to see Zeff before I leave these friendly seas behind too. Not to mention, I've got to get a whole new crew and break them in." As well as a couple more kids on different islands that he'd promised to come back and pick up once he'd collected Luffy. They were about Luffy's age as well though, so they should be alright.

Shanks grinned and pulled his father into a grateful hug.

The next morning, Harry was sitting just inside the door in the room where Bellemere and the kids were sleeping. He knew that the kids were just bordering on old enough to apprentice in such a dangerous sea as the Grand Line, and that he was starting to get on a bit in years, and even more that Bellemere wouldn't be too keen on him 'officially' taking up piracy, but he wanted them all to come with him. Even Nojiko, who had wanted to grow the best fruit on Commi Island, he wanted to come with him. She'd become quite good at sailing over the time it had taken to get his old crew back to their home villages before they came back here.

"Harry-Oji?" Bellemere asked, a little groggy, but surprised to see him there as she woke up.

"Good morning," he said. "Belle-chan, I have something to tell you."

She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then turned her attention to her captain.

"I'm going with Shanks to the Grand Line," Harry told her. "I'd like you and the kids to come with me."

Bellemere's jaw dropped open and her eyes bugged out in shock.

"You're allowed to say no Belle-chan, but I would worry less if I could keep an eye on you," Harry added when it was clear that Bellemere wasn't up to saying anything yet. "When we stop by Cocoyashi for a few of the things I left there, we can get the orchard too if you like. Having fresh fruit on a boat is always a good thing."

"H-Harry-Oji," Bellemere stuttered out at last. "You'll become a pirate?"

Harry shook his head at his little girl. "Belle-chan, I've always been an ocean scallywag. You know this. You _know_ that I was good friends with Roger, and that every man on my crew was a pirate before I hired them on," he said calmly, quietly.

Bellemere hung her head.

"Belle-chan," Harry called, twisting so that he could look up at his girl's face. "Will you be my new first mate when I go to the Grand Line?" he asked.

Bellemere's head snapped up and she stared. "You want me for first mate?" she asked.

"Well, you know more about sailing than any of the kids, so making any of them my first mate wouldn't be a very good idea," Harry teased a little. "Yes, I want you as my first mate on the Grand Line."

A smile slowly spread across Bellemere's face, and kept on growing until it was a grin. She had missed the action of being at sea, just a little, and things would certainly not be dull if she sailed with Harry-Oji and Shanks, particularly on the Grand Line.

"I'll do it," Bellemere said.

"Good. Now, if you will be so kind as to wake up this lot," he said with a gesture to Nami, Luffy and Nojiko, "I'm going to wake up Shanks' crew," he finished, the smile on his face going from pleased to slightly twisted as he spoke.

"Harry-Oji, what are you up to?" Bellemere asked suspiciously.

"You'll see Belle-chan. Just bring the kids and Shanks out to the front of the house," Harry answered.

The time had come, Harry had decided. The time had come to unearth his stock-piled riches, both here and in Cocoyashi. There were things he had to do, and do quickly, if he intended to leave East Blue for the Grand Line in just a couple of months. For starters, _The Freedom_ was going to get re-vamped. Most likely with magic, since no one in the Blues would know how to do what he wanted done, but re-vamped all the same.

He waited just outside the front door, and when his family were standing with him on the grass, he withdrew his wand. With a wave, he lifted the whole house and its foundations up and moved it four feet to the left before he dropped it down again.

"Dad," Shanks said, crossing his arms, a smile on his face. "What _have_ you been hiding?"

Harry grinned at his son and headed down the stairs that he had just revealed, waving for them all to follow him.

"Probably a few billion belli," Harry answered as he tapped the wall with his wand so that the passage would be lit when they got so far down that the morning sunlight wouldn't reach. "Not that I've counted how much was in here since I stashed an initial two-hundred-million about twenty years ago," he added casually.

"_Whaaaaat!_" they all screamed in shock.

Harry laughed and continued to lead the way down. "Well, it might be more. Like I said, I haven't counted it since before Shanks had figured out how to crawl."

"What do you need all that money for?" Shanks asked, eyes wide as he followed behind his father.

"That's just it, I didn't need it. That's why I stored it. There's another store under the house on Commi too. It's bigger than this one of course, since there's more space on the outskirts of Cocoyashi village than there is in the middle of Fuusha."

"_Eh!_" Bellemere, Nami and Nojiko all demanded.

"You mean we've been _living_ on top of a fortune, wearing other people's hand-me-downs?" Nojiko asked.

Harry looked over his shoulder at the girl. "If Bellemere had let me give her money, you would have had more new clothes, but she wouldn't take anything, so I just stored it all under the house while you slept," he answered.

"I didn't want to be a bother," Bellemere said quietly. "You hardly ever bought anything for yourself Harry-Oji. I kind-of thought it was because you didn't have much money."

"Even when I bought you that fancy gun, and high-quality swords for Shanks and Mihawk when you were growing up?" Harry asked, surprised.

"I guess... I guess I thought you were just being generous while we were kids, and went without something yourself to make up the difference," Bellemere answered.

"You should have asked," Harry insisted, but sighed. "Oh well, I'll be in charge of buying everything the children need from now on. There's really no need to worry about money, there never has been."

"So Dad," Shanks asked as they finally came to a stop in front of the first line-up of large chests, all neatly stacked like a wall and each one large enough to fit one of the children inside easily. "What are you going to do with all this money now that you've decided not to leave it in the ground any more?"

Harry smirked. "I might just decide to buy the world," he answered, then laughed at their expressions as jaws dropped and eyes bugged out once again. "Kidding," he added. "Swords, guns, cannon balls, gunpowder, food, clothes, spare sails for the ships, lumber and tools for if we need to make repairs – and I don't doubt that we will. Standard stuff."

"Sake?" Shanks asked hopefully.

"Smokes?" Bellemere added.

"Fruit trees?"

"Map paper?"

"Smoked meat?"

Harry laughed. "Of course, of course! But for now, we have to get all these chests up -"

"What's this big hole?" a voice yelled in shock.

Shanks laughed. "That's good, they're awake. We'll need their help getting these out of here," he said, grinning as he turned to head back up and yell them down.

Harry halted his son with a hand on his shoulder. "I brought all of this down here on my own Shanks," Harry said, and pointed his wand at the top row of locked trunks. "_Locomotor chests_," Harry said, then swung his wand around and up to the stairway that would lead to the outside. "I think I can handle taking them back up again."

Shanks just nodded, amazed, then blinked as he remembered his crew who were probably congregating around the hole by now.

"Oi up there! Stand clear!" he yelled up the passage way just as the first of the boxes, wood covered in oiled leather and with a metal frame, drifted past him and up to the surface.

The trunks had been stacked four high and five wide, but none of them – save for Harry of course – had expected them to be anything more than two or three deep. When there were still more at five deep, Harry started to wonder if his kids would ever be able to close their mouths properly again. The thought made him chuckle. The rear wall finally made an appearance as the thirteenth layer of treasure boxes shifted away and up the corridor.

"And you say there's _more_ under the house at Cocoyashi?" Bellemere squeaked out as the last trunk disappeared up the stairs.

Harry nodded and moved to go back up to the surface. They followed closely behind.

The pirates from Shanks' crew were standing around, just staring at the huge pile of boxes that had floated out of the ground. A couple had passed out on the grass though, and one had clearly towed away a box before the pile got too big and was trying to open it, just to see what was inside. He wasn't having much luck.

Harry chuckled and pointed his wand at the trunk that the pirate was wrestling with. "_Cistem Aperio_," he said, trying not to chuckle and just focusing on the spell. The chest, in obedience to the spell, popped open, revealing stacks of green notes, all in neatly tied bundles of one-hundred-thousand belli.

The trunk's sudden opening pushed the pirate onto his rear, and when he had sat up and was able to look into the trunk, his jaw dropped spectacularly.

"Are all of them like that?" Shanks asked, looking at his dad who was just standing there smiling.

"No," he answered. "Some of them are full of coins rather than cash."

"Twenty years of savings," Shanks mumbled, staring at the tower of treasure. "Twenty years of raiding pirate ships, collecting their bounties and selling everything they had that had any value to it. Dad... I know that everyone thinks of Gold Roger as the Pirate King, but I'm beginning to wonder if the one with all the treasure wasn't really _you_."

Harry chuckled. "Well, Roger had One Piece, was very lucky in all of his fights, and he got famous. I just had a few metric tonnes of belli," Harry said, smiling his crooked smile at his son before he turned to Bellemere. "So no more trying to make it on your own because you think I can't afford to support you," he instructed firmly.

"Sir, yes Sir," Bellemere answered, her blue eyes a bit vacant as she tried to absorb all that she was learning that day.

Shanks and his crew were given a trunk of belli to buy supplies for two ships with, while Harry went to _The Freedom_, wand in hand and a determined look on his face. When he reached the docks, the forty-year-old man pushed his glasses up his nose and stared up at his ship.

"We've been through a lot together my friend," he told the figurehead on his ship, a woman with Hermione's face, and a pair of large wings wrapped around her body. He hadn't been able to bear having his Alice's face on the front of his ship when the pain of her death was still raw and fresh, so Hermione had taken her place as his figurehead. If nothing else, he remembered to try thinking things through more carefully every time he looked at her. "But don't worry, you're staying right there, even if the rest of the ship changes underneath you."

Harry raised his wand, closed his eyes, and after a muttered "_Engorgio_," which made the ship much larger, began the most complex transfiguration spell he had ever cast. It took half an hour for the spell-working to complete, but when he was done, the ship's hull was metal, streamlined, twice the size and with every modern luxury he could think of from back home that would be useful. Walk-in cold-rooms in the very modern galley, a hydro-electric generator and an engine that could be powered by it, an intercom system so that people at one end of the ship could communicate with people at the other end, without having to shout, a large medical bay, ten bathrooms with plumbing and hot water, and forty flushing toilettes. There was also a rather large section of the ship dedicated to keeping fresh water – both for drinking and bathing. Rather than hammocks, there were bunks, as well as a couple of private rooms for the girls. Several dozen store rooms were beneath the cannons, as was a rather large collection of cells which could be used to keep livestock or prisoners as the need arose. There were three offices – one for him, one for his navigator, and one to receive any visitors. There was a training area in one of the many levels between the store rooms and the holding cells, a room lined with shelves that would soon be lined with books, and Hermione's face was still on the front.

"_The Freedom_," Harry said, opening his eyes. "Only not any more. Maybe you need a new name to go with your new look, my friend. Perhaps _The Dreamer_? Yes, I think that sounds right."

"Leviathan," Shanks exclaimed, staring as he walked up to where his father stood. "Have you got enough juice to do that to my ship?" he asked.

Harry laughed weakly. "If your crew would be so good as to load my ship, I will take a very quick nap to ease the headache that doing that gave me, and then yes, I can make your _Red Force_ less likely to get punctured by a cannon ball."

"What, not bigger as well?" Shanks asked with a slight pout.

Harry looked over at the pirate ship and then looked back at _The Freedom_ – now _The Dreamer_ – before looking at his son and raising a cynical eyebrow. His ship hadn't been the most massive of vessels before, and when he'd up-sized it, he'd really only made it equal in size to his son's. It was quite large enough, and Harry said so.

Shanks chuckled. "Yeah, you're right," he conceded, then turned to go and yell at his crew a little more.


	4. Chapter 4

"Harry-Oji, are we not going straight to the Grand Line?" Nami asked three weeks after they had left Fuusha Village behind. Shanks and his ship had said that they would stay in Fuusha a couple more days – with a trunk of Harry's belli to spread around the village pubs before they left – with a promise to see each other in Logue Town in two months time, before they would leave for the Grand Line together. Harry hoped that Shanks didn't try leaving the harbour in the middle of that storm that had blown through, just after _The Dreamer_ had left the island.

Harry patted the little girl's head. "No Nami-chan, we're going back to Cocoyashi Village before that, and on our way to Cocoyashi we're going to make a few other stops as well. I made a couple of promises to a some people on our way to Fuusha remember? I've got to go and convince a one or two boys to come with us. I want to try and find an old friend of mine as well, and I have no idea where he could be."

"The boy with bright green hair who called himself a doujoyaburi? And the one with the long nose that told funny stories?" Nami asked.

Harry nodded. "Roronoa Zoro and young Usopp," he said with a smile. "I'm sure they'll be lots of fun to have on the ship."

Nami frowned. "The long-nose one maybe, since he tells funny stories, but I don't really think the green-haired boy will be much fun," she said. "Especially compared to Luffy-kun."

Harry laughed. "We can only see, Nami-chan."

A voice cut through their conversation, clearly yelling from some way off. "Oi! Help us! The old man! Help this old fart! Oi! Oi!"

"Nojiko! Where's that coming from?" Harry yelled up to the girl in the crow's nest.

"Straight ahead!" she yelled back down. "Two people on that lump of rock!" she added, pointing as she bent over the railing.

"Nami, get the rope ladder. Nojiko, come down from there and gather the sails in as you do! Luffy, get the first aid kit for me. Bellemere, start _something_ cooking. I'll bet they've been on that rock since the storm nearly three weeks ago!" Harry ordered.

"Sir, yes Sir!"

It was a matter of a few minutes before _The Dreamer_ was pulled up alongside the rock and Harry was climbing down the rope ladder with the first aid kit. What he saw when he touched down shocked him.

"Zeff!"

"Harry?" the old man asked, his voice terribly weak.

"How long have you been here?" Harry asked, quickly checking the stump that was all that was left of Zeff's right leg and breathing a small sigh of relief to find that it wasn't infected.

"A couple of months. The rain three weeks ago was welcome, it relieved some of the thirst," Zeff answered, his voice sounded like dust had started to gather in his throat.

"Months?" Harry asked, wide eyed.

"Only had a small bag of food, gave it to the kid. He wants to go to All Blue," Zeff answered.

Harry chuckled. "Your dream. I get it, but I thought that _I_ was 'the idiot who adopted kids and encouraged their crazy dreams,'" Harry teased a little.

Zeff just shook his head, a defeated smile on his face.

"Well, come along my friend. We'll get you cleaned and fed, you too kid," Hary said, smiling over at the bony boy. He was probably a little older than Luffy, but he was so undernourished right now that anyone would think Luffy were the older one.

Harry then hitched Zeff over his shoulders – a task considerably easier than the last time Harry had performed the task, simply because the cook had lost so much weight – and carried his friend back up the rope ladder onto the ship. Carefully, he deposited Zeff on the deck then went back down for the boy, the first aid kit, and the bag of treasure that hadn't been able to feed them.

"Will the old fart be alright?" the boy asked.

Harry chuckled. "Zeff will be fine kid," he assured the boy.

"My name's Sanji," the boy said.

"And I'm Potter Harry," he answered, then set the boy on the deck of his ship. "Welcome to my ship Sanji-chan, _The Dreamer_."

"Oi! I'm twelve years old! I'm too old to be called 'chan'!"

Harry chuckled. "Ah, my apologies Sanji-kun. Now, come down to the galley. Belle-chan has probably got food waiting for you and Zeff by now, and I'll bet you're hungry. Nami, take us out! Our destination is Shimotsuki Village, that's -"

"North-west, five degrees of our current location, five days out!" Nami answered with a grin from where she stood by the helm, a piece of map paper and a pen in her hand.

Harry smiled. "Good girl," he said, then picked up Zeff once more and went down below deck, Sanji following him.

"I can't be a pirate without my leg," Zeff said as Harry put him down on a chair and Bellemere lay a bowl of thick soup in front of him. "I'm finally going to open that restaurant of the sea, and it won't matter to me who comes, if they're good or bad, marines of criminals. If they're hungry, I'll feed them," he picked up his spoon and dipped it into the soup, then eagerly brought it to his mouth, desperately hungry. "Ah, Belle-chan, it's so good!"

Bellemere chuckled as she put a bowl in front of Sanji. "You taught me how to cook, Zeff-Oji, of course it's good," she answered.

"It's even better because it's been seasoned with hunger," Harry added. "But Belle-chan isn't on the ship to be my cook Zeff. My old crew is dead, she's my new first mate."

Zeff paused in his eating a moment to look up at Harry. "I'm sorry to hear that. They were all good men."

Harry nodded. "I don't suppose you'd care to take on as my new ship's cook, would you Zeff?" he offered, just a little hope colouring his voice.

Zeff chuckled. "Heh, sure. Why not? You're not going to mind having another kid on board, and I feel responsible for that little eggplant there," Zeff answered with a smile.

Harry beamed. "Thank you, old friend. I'll make you a new leg and put your name on the door of one of the private quarters. For now though, eat. When you've had enough, there's a bathroom down the hall, port side, with hot running water that I'm sure you will appreciate. There's everything you'll need in there to get clean, and I'll grab you and Sanji-kun some clothes that will fit you until we get to Shimotsuki Village and you can buy some that are more to your taste."

Zeff sighed in gratitude, closing his tired eyes and reaching a hand up to grasp Harry's shoulder as he fought not to cry in happiness. "I – Harry, thank you. You always have been a good friend when life's storms started tossing a man about. I don't know where you got that much heart from in this age, but I am so grateful -"

Harry lay his hand over the one that Zeff was grasping his shoulder with. "Diego is dead, Roger is dead, I'm keeping a _very_ close eye on you to make sure you don't go the same way my friend."

Zeff chuckled and nodded, then returned to his food.

The next morning when Harry went to the kitchen for breakfast, Zeff was already there with Sanji, yelling at him about his technique with a knife and standing on his new wooden leg. It seemed that Bellemere's cooking was enough to get the two kitchen-bodies in a fit enough state to take over their appointed territory rather quickly. Both of them were still much too thin of course, but a few more solid meals and they would put that weight back on. In the mean time, Harry was going to save the boy from being scolded for taking off too-much apple-flesh when he peeled.

"There are a lot of good vitamins in the skins," Harry said absently, picking up a ribbon of smooth red and juicy white between finger and thumb. Breaking off a bit, he dropped it into his mouth and chewed happily, then swept up the other peels and moved over to another stove where he set a small pot and put a little water on to boil.

"Harry, this is my kitchen. What are you doing?" Zeff demanded with a frown.

Harry chuckled. "Your apprentice goofed," he answered. "He'll learn. In the mean time, I'm going to make apple-peel jelly, if you will pass me a sheet of gelatin."

Zeff sighed. "You're too nice," he grumbled. "But at least it won't go to waste," he added, marching over to the pantry a little awkwardly on his new peg-leg to get the requested gelatin sheet.

The night before, Harry had offered Zeff a couple of different wooden legs apart from the peg, ones that he would have been able to wear a pair of boots with. Harry suspected that Zeff would probably rotate his use of them, so that he would be able to get used to them all and walk almost normally again. It was good that Zeff still had his knee, it made walking on the new wooden legs easier for him.

"Apple-peel jelly?" Sanji asked, incredulous.

Harry nodded. "It's sweet _and_ it's sort-of healthy," he answered as Zeff returned with the gelatin sheet. Harry accepted it and dropped it into the boiling water, then immediately put the fleshy peels in after. "I'll keep stirring this until the gelatin has dissolved and the peels have tinted the water, then I'll pour it out into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator. It will be set and ready to enjoy by lunch time, and will make a nice dessert, so don't worry too much Sanji-kun if you make mistakes. I know lots of recipes that taste good that are made from table scraps."

"Why would you know things like that?" Sanji asked, less incredulous and more curious now.

Harry looked at the boy seriously, looked over his head at Zeff, then back to the boy. "Because when I was younger than you, I lived with people who were not nice, and table scraps was what I got if I was lucky," he answered. "So I learned to value even the smallest bit of food, and never let anything go to waste. Not peels, not bones, not fat, and only occasionally gristle. I even learned about which bugs make good eating."

"Uh, Captain?" Sanji asked tentatively. "Will you teach me that stuff too?"

Harry chuckled. "Zeff is your teacher," he said with a smile. "But there are books of ingredients and recipes in the ship's library that you can learn from when you have time. My personal recipe book is there as well, if you want to study it."

"Ah! Thank you Captain!"

Zeff and Harry both chuckled at the enthusiasm the boy was displaying, even if he was still too obviously thin.

"Back to work little eggplant," Zeff said. "Let Harry mind his jelly, you've got chores to do."

"I'm not an eggplant!"

Harry and Zeff just laughed.

When _The Dreamer_ finally made it to Shimotsuki Village, Sanji and Zeff were finally back to a healthy weight. Harry gave everybody some pocket money to spend – and a little extra to Zeff and Sanji as they was going to have to buy new clothes to replace the rags they had been wearing when they'd been found. Nami and Nojiko headed for the candy shop, and Luffy was running around, just excited to see the village. Bellemere went to find a tobacconist and stock up on smokes. Harry however, walked up the hill towards the dojo.

"Potter-san, welcome."

A man of average height and receding hairline stood just inside the sliding door in his bare feet.

"Koshiro-san, greetings and condolences," Harry answered, stopping short and bowing slightly to the man who really was only a few months older than him. "Kuina's life was cut far too short."

The man nodded sadly. "The Roronoa boy is taking it particularly hard. Thank you for this."

Harry nodded and moved to toe off his shoes when he noticed that Koshiro was actually stepping down to put his own geta on. Harry raised a curious eyebrow at this.

"Zoro trains with weights outside of the dojo," the other glasses-wearing man explained, then moved to lead the way.

It took them a couple of minutes to reach the site that Zoro had claimed as his own for his training, and when they got there Harry was reminded of the body-building gyms back in England, though clearly the boy had built it all himself, rather than having access to professional equipment. It was very impressive to see the boy pulling rocks up over a branch with ropes while he held a weight between his teeth.

"Zoro, are you nearly done?" Koshiro called.

The green-haired boy shook his head fiercely, and Harry was reminded of Diego. His old first mate had been endowed with much darker green hair than the boy, but the ridiculous strength was the same. Diego had been the one to teach Luffy how to throw a punch that could break through inch-thick planks of wood, though it would seem that he was having to re-learn now that he was elastic.

Koshiro frowned at the way Zoro barely acknowledged him in favour of his training, but he also noticed that Harry smiled softly. "I'll leave you alone then," he said, inclining his head politely before turning and going back to his dojo.

Harry bowed slightly in return before turning back to the boy and sitting down a few feet away so that he wouldn't distract him. It took another half hour before Zoro seemed satisfied with his training for the day, and Harry could see that the kid was exhausted. He really was stubborn about getting stronger, he'd give the kid that. But there were other things he would need to learn if he wanted to be the best, things he would need to do, and Harry looked forward to the day when he would get to see Mihawk again thanks to this boy's determination to become the best.

"Roronoa Zoro," Harry called, drawing the boy's attention to him. "Will you go to sea with me?"

"I have to get stronger," Zoro answered.

"You can do that on my ship just as easily as you can do that on land," Harry said. "I've raised three very strong boys already." He may not have heard from Ace all that often, but he was certain that the kid was doing just fine in the Grand Line, like his father before him. "One of them is even the greatest swordsman in the world," Harry added, knowing that would draw the boy.

It worked like a charm, Zoro's gaze snapping abruptly up to fix on Harry's face.

"Who?" he asked.

"Mihawk. He was in the Grand Line last time I heard from him though, so staying in East Blue isn't going to get you any closer to him," Harry said. "So, will you come with me?"

Zoro looked at Harry for a long moment. "I'll get stronger?" he asked.

Harry nodded.

"I'll come."

It only took two hours on board _The Dreamer_ for Sanji and Zoro to decide that they were going to enjoy beating each other up at every opportunity, much to Harry's delight, which confused everyone else as he just stood there laughing at the boy's kicking and swinging bamboo swords at each other respectively.

"That's almost exactly how Shanks and Mihawk used to be," he explained, a fond smile on his face and a slight glassy shine to his eyes as he held back nostalgically happy tears.

Syrup village was a little over a week away, but the weather was favourable and Harry got to enjoy setting Luffy and Zoro to racing to see who got their half of the ship's deck completely scrubbed to his satisfaction first in the mean time. Luffy had started to bounce around like a rubber ball since he ate that devil fruit, so the discipline was good for him, even if he could only be put to work for so long before he was finished and had to be released from his duties and permitted to bounce around all over the place. Still, the kid took to the work happily enough as well.

"Pirates! Pirates are approaching the village!" a young voice yelled hysterically from the shore just as Harry and Zoro were dropping the anchor.

"That's a little premature," Bellemere remarked with a frown. "It's not like we're even flying a pirate flag."

_The Dreamer_, though Harry and Shanks had agreed it was to be part of a two-ship fleet, had no piratical symbol on it anywhere. Harry was quite particular about that. He'd been a nearly-honest sea-borne scallywag for almost as long as he had been in this world, he wasn't about to change his colours just because he was following his son into the Grand Line.

"All ashore that's going ashore," Harry declared, dropping a rope ladder over the railing and to the sandy beach, as the island didn't have a proper harbour.

Zeff was quick to drag Sanji down to the markets where he had every intention of instructing the brat in the difference between fresh and _fresh_, and Nojiko followed along, having taken quite a liking to the grumpy old chef when he was talking about ingredients – it might have had something to do with that she still held fast to her dream to grow the best fruit, though her sphere had enlarged somewhat with having been to sea, and she was now determined to growing the best fruit not just on Commi Island, but in the whole world. Harry had laughed when she told him this, and at her pouting had simply said that it was a good thing the ship was so big then, or they wouldn't be able to fit a proper orchard on board for her, which had made Nojiko smile again.

Bellemere and Zoro had gone to find things to help with his training, as well as buy a couple of good swords for him if they could. The sword he had from Kuina was excellent, but his other two were very poor by comparison. Bellemere doubted that they would find even one good sword in Syrup Village, but they had to look anyway. Nami had gone to the bookshop with her pocket money, and Luffy had decided to follow her and help her carry – since he was a big strong boy, and Nami wasn't, and even if the village was a very quiet one, Luffy had decided to protect the carrot-top girl who was the only person on the crew younger than him.

Harry went to find the boy he had promised to come back for. His mother was ill, and his father was on Shanks' crew. It would be good for both of them, even if Yasopp didn't feel like he'd be a good enough father or some such similar nonsense.

He spotted the long-nosed boy running into a house on the edge of the village, still screaming at the top of his lungs that there was a pirate ship in the bay. With a chuckle in his throat, Harry walked calmly up to that same house and knocked on the door.

"Hello? Banchina-san?" Harry called through the wood, not letting himself in, as that would be rude.

There was a moment where he could muffled sounds within, which he guess to be people speaking, and then the door was opened by the boy he had seen running in a moment ago.

"Mama is sick," the boy stated with a frown, "and the doctor says she can't have any more visitors today."

"Then may I talk with you?" Harry asked politely. He hadn't actually been introduced to the boy when they had stopped by before to return a couple of his crew to their families, but Banchina had asked the doctor to fetch him for her, and had asked if Harry would consider taking her son in when she died from her illness, which she had expected to be soon.

Usopp frowned, unsure, but with another look inside his house, turned back to Harry and nodded.

"My name is Potter Harry, I'm the captain of the ship that just arrived," he said as he seated himself on the grass beside the door.

"I'm Usopp. I'm gonna be a great warrior of the sea!" the child declared.

"Ah! _The_ Usopp? I've heard a lot about you from Yasopp," Harry said, making his eyes wide and smiling as though it were his lucky day.

"My dad?"

Harry nodded. "I got to speak with him a few weeks ago, and when I told him that I would be going past Geko Island on my way to Logue Town, he said he had family here."

Usopp looked just about ready to cry with joy when he heard this. "Dad really didn't forget about us!" the boy mumbled as he wept.

Harry smiled softly. "It was hard to get him to talk about anything else," he said. It was only half-true though. Yasopp was very interested in talking about lots of things, but with Harry, the subject almost invariably turned to how he had managed being a parent and a captain at the same time, since Shanks had clearly turned out just grand.

"He didn't forget," Usopp said again, looking out from his house towards the sea as more tears streamed down his face.

"Usopp-chan, would you like to go out to sea with me and my crew?" Harry asked quietly.

Usopp's face was pure wondering excitement for all of five seconds, and then he looked back towards the door of his house, aware that his mother was inside, sick.

"I can't leave Mama, I'm all she's got left," Usopp answered.

Harry nodded. "I understand," he said soberly. "I wouldn't want to take you away from her, and we haven't got a doctor on our ship yet who would be able to take care of her." Harry stood. "We'll be here for a couple of days, if you change your mind," he offered, then with a wave, he walked back into Syrup Village.

Usopp went back into the house. He could tell his mother that their visitor had talked with Dad, and that Dad hadn't forgotten them!

Harry walked down through the village and kept on walking towards the mansion. Apart from trying to convince young Usopp to come with him, he suddenly felt like he had to talk with the ruling family about their little girl. He wasn't one to take children away from parents that loved them, but he just had a bad feeling – and he'd learned to listen to those types of feelings.

Knocking at the front door, it was answered by the family retainer, a slightly sheepish-looking man called Merry.

"Ah, Potter-san, what a surprise!"

"Hello Merry-san. Is the family in?"

Merry's cheerfully surprised expression abruptly dropped. "A-actually, the master and lady died the other night to a sickness that some of the people in the village have also caught. Miss Kaya is most distraught."

Harry frowned. "How is she taking it?"

Merry shook his head sadly. "Her sorrow is affecting her health. I am very worried for her Potter-san," the house-keeper admitted. "Perhaps you would be able to comfort her? She seemed to be very fond of you when you visited before."

Harry nodded. "Merry-san, I have a lot of children her age on my ship. I would like to ask her to come with me to sea rather than leave her in this big house so far from the village," he said, looking up the stairs to where he knew the family's private rooms were. "And you as well if you would like Merry-san," he added, turning back to the man.

Merry raised his hands deferentially. "I thank you for the offer Potter-san, but I get sea-sick. Though I hope that she will go with you. She may feel better if she is removed from where she has many memories with her parents."

Harry nodded and smiled in acceptance. Merry was a handy guy to have around, very good with tools, but if he got sea-sick, then it would probably be better for him if he stayed in Syrup Village.

Merry waved Harry into the house and up the stairs, and with a brief, companionable grip on the retainer's shoulder, Harry moved to head up the stairs and talk to Kaya. The girl was sitting on her bed, tucked in and with a tray of food on the bedside table next to her, untouched and getting cold. Harry knocked on her open door to announce himself and then walked in. She didn't even look up. Worried for the normally bright young girl, he sat down on the edge of her bed and placed one of his hands over her two which were folded in her lap and had her full attention – until his hand interrupted her view and she looked up sharply in surprise.

"Oh, Potter-san, hello," Kaya greeted.

"Hello Kaya-chan," Harry said, smiling gently for the girl. "How are you?"

Kaya frowned and looked back down at where his hand was over hers. "Not so good," she admitted.

"I heard from Merry-san what happened," Harry said quietly. "I'm sorry for what happened. I liked your parents."

Kaya nodded, tears silently beginning to run down her face.

"Kaya-chan, would you like to leave Syrup Village?" he asked gently. "You might feel better if you get out."

Kaya's head snapped up again and her watery gaze fixed on him hopefully. "Really, Potter-san?" she asked.

Harry nodded. "You can have a fresh start. Be anything you want to be. I'll help you however I can," he said with an encouraging smile.

"I want to be a doctor, and help people," Kaya said firmly.

Harry could understand her determination, if her parents had just died of a disease. "All ships need a good doctor," Harry told her. "I haven't got one right now, but I'm sure that you'll do a very good job, and every time we stop, you can learn new things from the doctors on the islands we stop at. Does that sound good?" he asked.

Kaya's face broke out into a wide, hopeful smile. "I would like that very much Potter-san! Thank you!"

Harry smiled. "Then you had better start packing your things if you're going to leave with us. We will be leaving East Blue all together in a couple of months as well, so don't leave anything behind, alright?"

Kaya nodded enthusiastically.

"I'll leave you to pack then. I'm sure Merry-san will be happy to help you if you want to ask him. I have to get back to my ship," Harry said, standing up and patting the young girl on the head kindly.

"Thank you Potter-san!"

Harry nodded and left the room.

Merry was waiting for him just beyond the door. "Thank you Potter-san," he said. "I'll pack up everything."

"We might never come back Merry-san," Harry cautioned the man. "It wouldn't be good to leave all these expensive things around without someone living here. There is room on my ship for all of it, and that way Kaya-chan can see things that remind her of her parents again when their deaths don't hurt as much."

Merry nodded. "It will be a big job. I'll have to get a few men from the village to help carry."

"I'll ask some to come up on my way through back to my ship," Harry said, then went down the stairs and left the mansion behind.

Three hours later, Harry was supervising the loading of cargo onto _The Dreamer_ – all of the material possessions from Kaya's house and the various crates of food that Zeff had chosen and that, if it weren't for Luffy's appetite and how many calories Zoro burned every day in his training and therefore needed to replenish, they wouldn't have needed so soon after their last stop.

Furniture, dust-collectors that Harry would probably unscrupulously sell at other stops as they travelled because he didn't like having useless things hanging around – a by-product of having grown up with the Dursleys and seeing the way they wasted material possessions on their 'precious Dudders' who only broke them, forgot them, and didn't care for them – and even the light-fittings were all were being carried on board and taken down to the storage rooms.

When Harry spotted a long-nosed boy dragging his feet alongside the men who were carrying, he quickly climbed down to talk to him. Usopp looked practically depressed.

"Usopp-chan?"

"Captain-san, will you still take me? Mama just – just -" the boy clenched his fists and bit his cheek as he glared at the ground just before his feet. "Will you still have me?"

Harry lay a gentle hand on Usopp's shoulder. "Of course I will," he said.

~oOo~

As Harry stood at the helm, he looked out at the crew he had assembled so far on his way to Logue Town, all of them hard at work in the rigging save for Zeff, who was hard at work on deck with the ropes that weren't so high up, and he couldn't help but smile at himself. He'd really gone overboard with the big-hearted thing _this_ time. Apart from himself, Bellemere and Zeff, there wasn't _one_ who was older than twelve – and Zoro was the eldest only by a couple of months, which was another reason Sanji got into fights with him. Nojiko had her birthday another three months after Sanji's and then Luffy was a year behind her. Nami, Usopp and Kaya were another year younger than Luffy. Seven kids, three adults, an absolutely massive ship... Harry was really going to need to get some more people on this boat, even if he potentially _could_ sail it all by himself with magic, which he didn't want to, as the kids would be made better for learning how to do the work themselves and do it properly.

"Captain!" Nojiko called out from where she was perched in the upper regions of the sails – she did seem to really like those great heights. "There's someone in the water!"

"In which direction and how far out?" he yelled back up.

"They're about as far from the port-side bough of the ship as I am from the deck!" she answered.

"Zeff, can you get a life ring out to them?" Harry asked as he tied a rope around the helm so that it wouldn't move and allow their course to alter. Even if Zeff could get the ring out, he'd need help pulling whoever it was in, if they were even conscious to grab it.

"Captain!" Nojiko yelled out again just as Zeff was grabbing the nearest life ring. "There are more!"

Harry looked over the railing and ahead, then gestured for Zeff to never mind about the ring. "Just get cooking my friend," he said quietly.

Zeff nodded, a frown on his face. "Eggplant! Get down from there! There's kitchen work to be done!" he yelled up before turning and heading below deck.

"Nojiko, you keep an eye out for people in the water! Bellemere, get to the helm! Nami, Usopp, Kaya, fetch blankets! Zoro, Luffy, you're going to help me as I get the people out of the water by making sure that they're all alive once they're on deck."

"Sir, yes Sir!"

Harry pulled out his wand and took position at the most forward point on the bough of the ship so that he could see the near people as clearly as possible, and have better aim. Nojiko would be able to direct him to those he might miss, and let Bellemere know if there were others further out that they still had to rescue. There was just no way he would reasonably be able to get all of these people out of the water fast enough if he did it in the traditional way, and as Mediterranean-like as the waters of East Blue were, it was still not advisable to just be left in them for too long. Of course, this was because of the creatures that lived in the waters rather than the temperature.

"_Mobilicorpus_," Harry incanted, over and over again as he pointed his wand to drifting person after unconscious body and almost-drowning man, lifting them from the water and placing them on the deck of his ship, one after the other in a somewhat tidy line.

"Harry-Oji! This man isn't breathing!" Zoro called from beside one of the men.

"Neither is this one!" Luffy yelled from another place in the line.

"Stick your fingers down their mouths, _gently_ Luffy, make sure that there isn't anything blocking their airways, then pump their chests for them. Yell for me again if they still aren't!" Harry responded, lifting more bodies from the water.

"The towels and blankets Captain-san!" Usopp called as he emerged on deck, Kaya and Nami behind him, also carrying blankets and towels.

"Start drying them off, and help Zoro and Luffy check that they're all breathing. If they're not -"

"Clear their airways and apply short bursts of pressure to their chests, if necessary, apply mouth-to-mouth, breathing for them," Kaya interrupted, her face set.

Harry gave the girl a lop-sided smile. "That's right Doctor Kaya," he answered. "You heard her boys, follow Kaya-chan's instructions in caring for the men."

"More off the starboard side Harry-Oji!" Nojiko called from above.

"I see them!" he answered, and returned to his spell casting. When he couldn't see any more, he looked up towards Nojiko. "Can you see any more?" he called out.

Nojiko searched silently a moment then pointed. "One more!" she answered. "He's a fair way off yet though, and he looks like he's about to go under. I'll let out a little more sail so that we can reach him!"

Harry nodded and leant forward, squinting his eyes to try and spot this last person. When at last he did, he could see why Nojiko was worried. They were slipping off the end of their small piece of driftwood that had been keeping them up. When Harry lifted him from the water, he could see why he had been about to lose his fragile purchase. The young man – he couldn't be more than fifteen years old – was gripping a stick with a heavy-looking ball on the end in each hand. Setting the laden youth down on the deck beside him, Harry saw for himself that he wasn't breathing, and go to work clearing his airways. Less than half a minute later, Harry had moved on to the next person who's chest was not rising and falling as it should have been, while the lad coughed up all the water that had been in his lungs. He could have used _anapneo_ and been done with it instantly, but he had set the kids to doing it the regular way, and never let it be said that Captain Potter of _The Dreamer_ would give orders to those in his command that he himself would not be willing to follow also – unless he couldn't and they could, of course, like Luffy's stretching thanks to his rubbery-ness, or employing Nami's gifted eye for map making and navigation.

Harry's attention was abruptly drawn from his task – thankfully the man had just drawn his first independent breath and would begin coughing up water shortly – when another, larger man in rather excessive-looking golden armour grabbed Luffy around his neck. Being rubber, the kid didn't mind it too much, but it still certainly wasn't good for his health. Harry was up like a shot and with his sword drawn.

"Put him down," Harry ordered coldly, sword-tip against the man's cheek. "We did not rescue you so that you could terrorise us."

"Ha! Do you even know who I am?" the man demanded. "I am Don Kreig! The strongest pirate in East Blue!"

Harry restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "No, you're not," he answered when he had curbed his initial reaction. "As long as Shanks is in East Blue, Kreig-san, you are far from the strongest pirate in this sea."

Kreig sneered. "Who is this 'Shanks'? I've never heard of him."

"Shanks is awesome!" Luffy yelled, even as Kreig was still holding him by the neck. "He came from the Grand Line! He was on Gold Roger's ship!"

"His bounty is also several times your own," Nami said, holding up the wanted posters for Shanks and Don Kreig side by side.

"What's a Grand Line pirate doing in East Blue?" one of the other men asked, clearly intimidated.

Harry smirked as Luffy stated, very clearly. "He came to catch up with Harry-Oji. Harry-Oji is really cool too! He's Shanks's dad!"

Harry chuckled, though his sword didn't waver from where it was poised at Kreig's face. "I'm only cool because Shanks is my son? Luffy, you wound me," he said.

"Ah, sorry Harry-Oji, you're a great captain too!" Luffy consoled with a wide grin.

Kreig's eyes grew wide. The _father_ of a pirate with a bounty over one-hundred-million belli? What kind of man had a kid like that – and laughed about it?

"Your poster says 'dead or alive' Kreig-san," Harry observed, taking the bounty-flier from Nami with his free hand. "And your first action upon gaining consciousness on my ship was to threaten one of my foster-children. I don't take kindly to that. I think I shall have to keep you in one of the cold stores until we reach a marine base where I can hand you over. Wouldn't want to have to deal with the stink of rotting human flesh," he explained, swiftly withdrawing his sword before bringing it back around in a clean slicing motion, removing the man's head from his shoulders. "I'm sure that you understand. The kids need to eat regularly, and if you stunk up the place, it might put them off eating," he told the now headless corpse as it fell back.

"Don!" the crew members cried out, horrified to see their beloved leader so easily defeated.

Harry picked up a corner of the cape that Kreig had been wearing and used it to wipe the blood off his sword before he sheathed it again. "You alright Luffy?" he asked, Kreig's dead hand now no longer holding the boy captive.

"Yup!"

"Good," he said, patting the kid on the head with a smile. Turning to the crew of pirates that had been rescued, Harry's face slid into a menacing frown. "You all have two possible futures," he stated in a clear voice. "You can request to be a part of my crew, and I just might accept you, or you can be handed over to the marines along with your dead captain when we reach the next marine base. Bear in mind that _I_ will be the one who decides your future. In the mean time, anyone who threatens the children will be immediately locked up in the holding cells in the bowels of my ship. I don't make a habit of killing every Tom, Dick and Harry who crosses me," he said with a private smirk at the irony of that statement, since he _had_ killed Tom Riddle, _wanted_ to kill Draco Malfoy several times throughout his school life, and was _himself_ Harry, "but the reaches of my grace and mercy are not infinite."

"Captain," Zoro said quietly.

"Yes Zoro?"

"Why did you have to kill this guy on the half of the deck that you make _me_ scrub?" he asked, a slight whine in his voice. "That blood is gonna take _ages_ to get out of the woodwork properly."

Harry chuckled fondly. "I'll clean up the blood," he promised. "But just this time, as I'm the one who caused all of the mess."

Don Kreig's crew all stared in shock at this man who went from kind to killer and back again so easily. Kreig had been their hero for his strength and terrible ferocity, his unwavering prowess in battle, but he had been taken down, so easily, by this man who smiled at children and promised to clean up the mess that he had made. Kreig would never have done such things for them. They were his tools to order, and they basked in the reflected glory of his name. This sort of man was completely beyond their comprehension.

"Harry-Oji, have you even introduced yourself to all these people yet?" Bellemere asked with a chuckle.

"Ah, no, I haven't," Harry admitted, a little sheepishly, scratching the back of his head before he turned to the wet people on his deck. "I am Potter Harry. Captain of _The Dreamer_."

"Potter?"

"The pirate hunter?"

"The 'man who never backs down'?"

Harry chuckled, the kids all turning to stare at him, as they hadn't heard any of these things about him. He was just Harry-Oji, their captain and the man who took care of them.

"I suppose I could be called those things," Harry answered.

"Soup!" Sanji called, stepping out on deck, pushing a trolley that held a two large pots, three piles of bowls and many spoons.

The crew of Don Kreig, Harry quickly learned – to his great disappointment – were almost completely useless as fighters and almost equally useless as sailors – by his standards. If he were interested in terrifying civilians then they would probably be sufficiently fearsome, but he wasn't, and their abilities as sailors had caused their ship to be destroyed on a coral reef during a storm. The exception to their extremely low standards was their youngest, the one who had been hanging onto the rather impressive balls-on-sticks. He knew how to handle the strange weapon, and he was exceptionally nimble in the rigging. The lad's name was Gin – _just_ Gin. It had taken a lot of talking to get the kid to come around, but he eventually had agreed to join Harry's crew, and the grin on Harry's face when the lad said yes had seemed to spark something within the kid. Something good that Harry knew, deep in the pit of his stomach, meant that the kid would do well with them and even flourish if given the chance – and he would definitely be given the chance.

At the nearest island with a marine base, Harry collected the bounty for Don Kreig and every useless member of the – now dead – man's crew. He sold Kreig's armour to a metalsmith and all the weapons that the pathetic collection of pirates possessed were exchanged for belli at a the shop of a weapons dealer. It was a tidy little amount and went into a new chest in Harry's office that, when it filled, would be shrunk and stored with the other match-box-sized trunks in the safe beneath his bed that had been sealed with magic to keep out anyone who wasn't a wizard – and in this world, that was pretty much everyone but him and _maybe_ Shanks, though his son hadn't ever displayed any ability for magic when he'd been young, which Harry was just as glad for. It was problematic stuff really.

After that stop, it was Cocoyashi Village for Harry's second, larger stash of belli, and to dig up a few of the trees that he had planted with Bellemere all those years ago – carefully, so that they could be re-planted on the deck of _The Dreamer_. Harry went down for his crates of cash by himself this time, rather than taking his 'family' with him, and shrunk them down to the size of match boxes while still out of sight, stowing them all into one admittedly large chest and carrying it out and onto the ship while Genzo was busy lecturing Bellemere, Nojiko and Nami all about going to sea and leaving the village behind – the rest of the crew looking on in wide-eyed shock at the way the old man talked.

Harry didn't want the people of Cocoyashi to know that he had used their home as a place to hide large amounts of belli. They were nice people, but he still thought that it probably wouldn't go over too well all the same – even after he'd gotten rid of Arlong and magically repaired all their ships. In Fuusha, the people had all known that he took a trunk of treasure to his house every time he visited, and held that it was none of their business unless he spent some. These people however had no idea that he'd left boxes of riches here, and it would have been a rude shock to them to discover that he had. They knew he had plenty of money, they just hadn't known he kept any portion of his excess under their feet.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry was walking down the streets of Logue Town, only Gin and Zoro at his sides. Luffy had decided to run off and explore on his own, particularly interested in seeing the gallows where Gol D. Roger had been executed. Harry had taken the kid there before, but from the way Luffy was going on, he had the feeling that the boy was going to try and climb it, to see the view that Roger had just before he drew his last breath. Zeff had Sanji and Usopp under his eye – signing the former up to a cooking competition, so that he could see if the kid had learned _anything_ since they had joined Harry's crew, and making sure that the latter didn't spend his money on junk that the sales people in shops were pawning off at ridiculous prices with equally ridiculous stories.

Bellemere had all the girls – they were going shopping for clothes, books, and a few weapons so that they could defend themselves on the Grand Line.

"Where are we going Captain?" Gin asked.

"To a pub," Harry answered. "An old pub, with an old history, and where I _hope_ I will be able to find some decent scallywags to sail with us, and maybe even a few friends."

"Are we gonna drink?" Zoro asked.

Harry halted and looked down at the green-haired boy with one spectacular katana and two stock-standard swords of the same style at his hip. "I'll _think_ about it," he said at last, then started walking again.

Zoro grinned when Harry wasn't looking and gave Gin a thumbs up. The two boys had become good friends, along with Sanji, though the way they openly traded blows and insults almost constantly would suggest otherwise – though they were all three prepared to unite against Luffy when he was bouncing around too much. Gin cocked a half-grin in response to Zoro's, then he nodded and the two of them followed after Harry again.

Harry pushed the door of The Gold Roger open and waved the boys with him in first, then closed the door behind him.

"Dad!"

"Sir!"

"Harry-Oji!"

Three different voices cried out from near the bar, while a general cry of "Eh! Potter-san!" arose from a familiar looking faces around the room.

"Shanks! Mihawk! Ace!" Harry responded happily, taking long, brisk strides straight over to them through the crowd of people who were drinking. "If all of us are together like this in Logue Town, then something very strange _must_ be going on," he said, smiling broadly as first Shanks, then Ace gave him hugs, and Mihawk stood to bow to him before also wrapping his arms around the man who had been so important in his life.

It was especially surprising to see Ace back in Logue Town, since he'd only been on the Grand Line for a year.

"Who do you have with you?" Mihawk asked, looking over Harry's shoulder at the two boys on the verge of man-hood.

"Ah, yes, Mihawk, this is Roronoa Zoro," Harry said, waving the green haired boy over. "He wants to be the best swordsman in the world."

"Roronoa?" Mihawk asked, his golden eyes darting from the boy to Harry, who nodded subtly. "I see. Three swords?"

"He's not bad," Harry said. "Almost as good as you were at that age even," he added in a baiting voice. "Of course, you only ever used one blade at a time. Zoro here uses them all at once sometimes."

Mihawk nodded and gestured for the green-haired boy to follow him out the back of the pub.

Zoro looked to Harry, and at his nod, went.

"This other fine young man is Gin," Harry said with a smile as he lay a hand on Gin's shoulder. "I fished him out of the water myself, and I haven't regretted talking him into staying on for even a second."

Gin ducked his head in embarrassment. Harry was very free with praise, but he never said anything that he didn't mean.

Shanks extended his hand to the fifteen-year-old. "Pleased to meet you Gin," he said.

"Yeah, me too," Ace said with a grin as Gin shook Shanks' hand, then grabbing his hand as well for a few solid pumps before he let go. "I'll bet you'll be fun to hang out with!"

"Ace, you're getting ahead of yourself and being confusing," Harry scolded. "You've come back to East Blue just to join my crew?" he asked.

Ace grinned. "Yep!" he answered. "Mihawk-san too. Shanks-san called us both on the den den mushi and asked," Ace explained, then his grin slipped. "I'm sorry about what happened to everybody Harry-Oji," he said quietly.

Harry lay a hand on Ace's shoulder and nodded silently. He was sorry too. Then he looked over at Shanks and raised an eyebrow. "Anyone _else_ you asked to come join my crew?"

The red-head smiled easily. "There's a doctor with a reindeer waiting for you on the other side of Reverse Mountain. The reindeer is a devil fruit user, cute little fellow he is too, but can't seem to take a compliment, and the doc is an absolutely ancient woman, but she knows what's what," Shanks said, chuckling. "Apart from that? No. I know how important picking your own crew is to you Dad. I just thought I'd arrange an early birthday present for you by getting these two back and finding you a _pair_ of really good doctors."

Harry nodded. If they were good, then Kaya would be able to learn from them as well, and then they'd have almost a whole medical _team_ on the ship, which would doubtless come in handy on the Grand Line. "Thanks Shanks."

"Potter-san," the barman greeted pleasantly. "Usual?" he asked, reaching for a bottle of whiskey.

Harry nodded and finally took a seat, gesturing for Gin to sit with him. "And a juice for my young friends here, and for my other boy when Mihawk brings him back," he requested. "Or a glass of milk if they prefer," he added, ignoring Gin's slightly crestfallen look. "They still aren't old enough to drink," Harry stated firmly

The barman smiled and nodded obligingly.

"I'm still not old enough?" Gin asked.

Harry chuckled. "_No_," Harry answered. "Two more years."

The old barman chuckled as he set a two glasses of milk down in front of Gin and Ace, though they drank happily enough. They could appreciate that milk was good for them at least, even if they'd rather be allowed to try alcohol – they were in a bar after all!

Mihawk returned with Zoro shortly after the drinks were set on the bar in front of them, a smirk on his face and a very determined expression on Zoro's.

Harry raised an eyebrow at Mihawk when he noticed that Zoro was only carrying Kuina's sword now.

"He broke my other two," Zoro stated petulantly before he went to sit with Gin and Ace, accepting a milk from the barman with a mumbled 'thank you'.

"He'll do," Mihawk answered quietly to Harry's real unasked question. He shifted his gaze to follow Zoro with some small measure of pride and appreciation, even as the boy went immediately to sit with Gin and Ace, accepting the drink that was put before him without any comment. "It will be good to teach him I think, even if our styles are so different. I look forward to sailing with you again Sir," he added, utterly sincere as he looked back at Harry.

"Feeling's mutual," Harry said with a smile. "Though I don't know how I'm supposed to get more of a crew with you on side," he quipped, chuckling.

"You could steal them from the marine core," Shanks suggested with a laugh. "How many do you have?"

Harry sighed. "I can modify the ship so that it doesn't need that many people to work the sails, but doing that means that I have just a couple of very large sails, and it's hard to control how much wind you catch if you do that. A crew of thirty would really be the bare minimum, and with Mihawk, Ace and your two doctors joining us, that makes fifteen, including Bellemere, myself, and Zeff, who's only got one leg now," Harry explained, running a hand through his hair.

Shanks and Mihawk both dropped their jaws to hear that Zeff had not only joined Harry's crew – something they had never expected of the old pirate captain – but that he had also _lost a leg_, which left him less able to fight.

Harry ignored their reactions. "I _can_ make up the difference with magic," he said, finally admitting to both of his boys exactly what it was he had that had meant the ship always had fireworks on the birthdays of crew members when they were young, even though Harry had never spared gunpowder for the occasion, as giving Shanks an explanation to how he'd moved all those chests out of their hiding place in Fuusha, and a few other things as well. "But I'd rather have a larger crew than cheat so blatantly."

Shanks and Mihawk both nodded in understanding. They both knew that their old man liked things to be done the way that he called the _right_ way – which usually translated to really mean the _hard_ way, but that wouldn't need to be fixed later unless something changed. The two of them, and probably Ace and Luffy and all the other kids he'd taken in since them, had heard Harry say often enough that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing _the right way_.

Harry's 'right way' meant that Shanks and Mihawk both knew how to use the stars, sun and moon to navigate with as well as a compass – or Log Pose – and it meant that they knew the best way to store food, maintain ropes, mend sails, wrap bandages, and hold a gun even though they both held a preference towards using blades. Because of Harry they could a lot of everyday sorts of things that nearly everybody of their acquaintance surprisingly didn't.

Harry took a sip of his whiskey and stared into the bottom of his glass for a moment. "Maybe I _will_ filch a couple from the marine base. Belle-chan was a marine, I might be able to get a couple of decent fighters and sailors from them."

"Dad, I was kidding," Shanks said. "Seriously Dad, if you try and make current marines into pirates, it's not going to turn out well for you."

Harry chuckled. "I've got a reputation in East Blue," he reminded his boy. "I might as well get that translated into a decent sized bounty before I hit the Grand Line. Besides, you know how picky I am about who sails with me."

"Unless they're kids who would benefit from the time at sea to help grow up some," Mihawk said with a smirk, jerking his chin in the direction of the three sitting and drinking straight milk or juice now and deeply engrossed in a conversation about fighting styles and Ace's hat.

Harry shrugged. "They don't have to unlearn stuff first," he explained. "People underestimate kids a lot as well, which gives them an advantage if they know how to use it."

Shanks and Mihawk chuckled. That was another lesson they'd gotten – take any advantage you can, and use it for all that it was worth, and then make it stretch a little further.

For a while, they just sat and drank, sometimes being interrupted by someone asking if they had heard right, and Harry wanted people for his crew. Harry always went out to the back of the bar with these people for a couple of minutes, going over their weapon skills as well as how long they'd been sailing, as well as a few trickier questions – like how they were around women and kids, their _exact_ thoughts on treasure, and if they had any family. Most of these interviews ended with Harry smiling and shaking the ex-pirates firmly by the hand and welcoming them to his crew, only a couple with Harry turning them away politely. Harry had gained twenty new crew members by the time he was ready to leave The Gold Roger and head up to the marine base.

"I still think it's a bad idea," Shanks warned.

"I know you do," Harry answered. "That's why I'd like you to find Zeff and Bellemere, and make sure everybody is on the ship just in case this doesn't work."

Shanks sighed and stood. "Sir, yes Sir," he answered, rubbing his face even as a wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Zoro," Harry called. "You're coming with me. Gin, Ace, I'll see you at the ship. _Go straight there_," he added firmly.

"Sir, yes Sir," they all answered, quickly finishing their drinks and jumping down from their stools.

Out in the street, the group split and went in two directions.

"Where are we going Captain?" Zoro asked.

"To the marine base," Harry answered, turning a corner. "I'm going to see if I can get a couple more people."

"Then why am I coming?"

Harry smiled. "If anyone wants to come, then they need to be able to keep up with you with a blade. They don't have to be able to best you, but they need to be able to keep up for a while," he explained.

Zoro nodded. He had been the strongest on his home island, but Harry had been the one to defeat him in every spar since he joined _The Dreamer_ until yesterday, when Zoro had won his first fight – only to be bested again in the immediately following one.

"We're also going to stop by this sword dealer and get you a couple of quality swords to go with Kuina's white one," Harry added, stopping abruptly in front of a shop that had its window filled with blades.

Zoro turned to look and blanched slightly at the prices, but Harry just walked in. Scanning his eyes around the shop, his eye caught on one of the barrels of cheap swords. There was a sword there, he could tell, one that actually had its own blood lust.

"Zoro, I want you to go through those barrels until your hand comes to rest on a sword that feels different in your hand," Harry instructed quietly, nodding towards the barrels.

Zoro nodded and went to do as he was told, touching every hilt as he went through the weapons.

Harry went to talk with the man at the counter while Zoro did that.

"I would like to see your best katana please," Harry requested.

"Oh?" the balding man asked. "But I see you have a fine sabre at your hip Sir, why do you want a katana?"

"For the young swordsman," Harry said, gesturing to Zoro who was getting closer to the sword that Harry had felt the presence of. "He hasn't been taught about the quality of swords yet, but that is today's lesson."

The shop keeper stared as the green-haired young man's hand came into contact with a sword that he hadn't put there. Probably his wife had. A sword he didn't want to sell because of its curse. He quailed slightly as the boy drew out the weapon from among the others, and started to shake as the customer before him smiled.

"Zoro? What do you have there?" Harry asked.

"I'm not selling that sword," the man objected. "It's a Kitetsu, the Sandai and -"

Zoro's brow furrowed. "It's cursed," he said, cutting off the shop keeper.

Harry's easy smile became a ferocious grin.

"You knew?" the shop keeper asked.

"I can feel it," Zoro answered, shaking his head.

"It's a very fine sword though," Harry pointed out. "Not the finest that Kitetsu made, but still very well crafted."

Zoro nodded his head. "May I test my luck against this sword's curse?" he asked, drawing the blade, showing off the way the metal had been worked so that it looked like there were blue flames dancing up the sharpened edge.

Harry nodded while the shop owner's jaw dropped in horror to see the boy toss the blade up in the air, hold out his arm, and wait for the blade to come down.

"Are you crazy? It's a bloodthirsty sword with incredible sharpness! You'll lose your -" he cut his own words off as the back of the blade harmlessly touched the boy's arm before slicing into the floor.

Harry smiled. "Well, that's one sword," he said. "Now we just need one more."

The shop keeper swallowed and ran into the back of the shop. When he came back, he placed a single sword on the counter. "The finest blade in my shop," he said. "The Yubashiri."

"I think that Zoro has the finest blade in your shop," Harry corrected gently, "Zoro, come and let the man see your white sword. He is being very generous to show us his greatest prize, it deserves reciprocation in the same kind."

Zoro nodded and handed over his sword while he looked at the one that had been brought out.

"A Meito, in my shop," the man said, awed as he held the while scabbard reverently in his hands. "I agree Sir," he said humbly. "Your young man _does_ own the best sword in this shop. The Wadou Ichimonji. I am blessed to see it."

"For these swords," Harry began, withdrawing his wallet. "As well as oils and powder and a whet-stone to care for them, shall we say fourteen-million, for the swords and an extra two-thousand for the care kit?"

"You are most generous," the shop owner said, handing the Meito sword back to Zoro and accepting the money from Harry. "The care kits are by the door, please take one as you leave."

Harry nodded. They would do best to stop and find one of the sword smiths who really knew what he was doing and commission swords just for Zoro, but the one in Logue Town that Harry had gone to for Shanks' and Mihawk's swords had died recently, and Harry didn't have the time to wait for a sword to be made this time anyway.

They would have to do until he _did_ have the time, until then though, Zoro was going to have a problem child of a sword to contend with in the Sandai Kitetsu, but he was going to have a couple of people to help him master his swords, so it should be alright.

With Zoro's new swords at his side, Harry led the way to the centre of Logue Town – to the marine base. When they left the base a half-hour later, they left without a single marine interested in joining the crew and the base captain, the ageing Garp who had once been a vice-admiral, calling the marine headquarters to let them know about a man who would need a bounty on his head.

~oOo~

Getting _The Dreamer_ over Reverse Mountain was an interesting trial for the crew, and Harry frequently employed magic to save the body of the ship from being damaged. The reward was waiting for them when they came down the other side into the Grand Line though. As was Laboon, an island whale from West Blue, the sea where Harry had started his life in the Blues of this world.

Harry smiled to see Crocus, who had been the doctor for Roger on his last sojourn into the Grand Line, and met the ancient doctor, a woman called Kureha, and the reindeer Tony Tony Chopper, who Shanks had told him would be joining _The Dreamer_'s crew. Kaya was particularly pleased to meet them, and helped them to settle their things into the medical bay on board the ship and the adjoining rooms that Harry provided for them as the doctors.

Harry spent a bit of time sitting with Laboon while Nami was instructed in the uselessness of a conventional compass on the Grand Line by Crocus.

"Do you ever miss West Blue, Laboon?" Harry asked the whale. "I suppose that you can come and go between all the Blues as easily as you like, on this side of the Red Line at least I mean. I guess it would be a bit hard for you to go over that," he said, looking up at the mountain range that divided the Blues of the southern hemisphere from those in the northern hemisphere.

Laboon moaned softly, and Harry chuckled as though he understood.

"You're big enough to be able to take care of yourself by now surely," Harry said, patting Laboon's side where he could reach. "You know, it's _possible_ that those pirates died out there. The Grand Line isn't the easiest of places for humans."

Laboon moaned again, a slight whine trailing off at the end.

"I'm not going to object if you want to come with us and find out," Harry said. "You're the one who decides where you go after all."

Laboon's eyes drooped slightly and he whined again.

"Of course I mean it."

"The doctors are settled Sir," Mihawk said, walking up to Harry where he was sitting beside the still-growing island whale. "And I think your young navigator is in love with the Log Pose that Crocus-san gave her," he added, the tiniest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Harry nodded. "How are you coping with Belle-chan?" he teased slightly.

Mihawk's smile grew. "It is good to argue with her again, and with Shanks nearby as well, there is no shortage of fun to be had," he answered.

"You've been _bored_ haven't you?"

Mihawk shrugged at the accusation and looked away.

"Thought so. And Zoro?"

"I like the kid," he answered, his smile taking on a vicious edge. "He's got a lot of raw power, which he builds on all the time, but I'll teach him grace with his blades yet."

Harry chuckled and stood at last. Mihawk didn't need to be first mate, teaching all the kids how to use their weapons satisfied him enough, and Bellemere didn't need to bark out orders to him because he _knew_ the orders from sailing under Harry – and a couple of other people – for almost all of his life.

"When do you anticipate the student surpassing the master?"

Mihawk snorted, crossed his arms, and then smiled. "Not before he's twenty."

~oOo~

Harry held Nami back from going to bed after dinner, and took her out onto the deck beside the helm, politely dismissing the man who stood at duty and took his place. They had been on the Grand Line for all of one day, but this was a lesson that he would not allow to wait a moment longer.

"How do you navigate Nami-chan?" he asked, gesturing for her to sit at the map space open beside the helm.

"In East Blue, I used a compass," she answered. "When we came into the Grand Line it started going crazy though, and Crocus-san gave me this Log Pose to navigate with," she added, holding out her wrist which had the bubble strapped to it, and the needle inside.

Harry shook his head. "The Log Pose points to island after island. It's a pointer rather than a proper way to navigate. You said that the compass stopped working?"

Nami nodded and pulled the compass out of her pocket to show him.

"The needle won't stop spinning," she pointed out.

Harry smiled at the little girl. "I know where North is," he said.

Nami's eyes widened. "Harry-Oji?" she asked, wanting to know. Knowing which way was North was important for making maps.

Harry pointed into the sky. "There it is," he said.

Nami frowned and crossed her arms. "Harry-Oji! North doesn't mean up!" she scolded.

Harry laughed. "I know that Nami," he answered. "But do you see that star?" he questioned, moving to stand behind her so that she could look up his arm to see where he was pointing.

"The bright one?" she asked.

Harry chuckled. "That star is the North Star. In East Blue we could see the South Star. If you hold up a piece of string with a weight on the end so that the top of the string is at that star, and the bottom of the string crosses the horizon, then that way is North," Harry explained.

"But Harry-Oji, stars _move_ at night," Nami said.

Harry shook his head. "Not this one Nami. It is always exactly in the same place. We might move, but it will always let you know where North is. Here," he said, rolling out a large piece of paper he had brought with him. "This is a map of the stars. I made it when I still lived in West Blue." Those astrology lessons back at Hogwarts had come in handy. Of all the things he had never believed would, it was probably the most practically applicable lesson he had from his old school.

"You lived in West Blue Harry-Oji?"

"For a year, but that was a very, very long time ago. I want you to study this. If you can learn to be able to match the constellations on here to the stars in the sky, recognise them all, then you'll always be able to find North and the North Star. Okay?"

Nami grinned and nodded. "Thank you Harry-Oji!"

~oOo~

The first island of the Grand Line that _The Dreamer_ and _Red Force_ stopped at came a month into their Grand Line adventure, and only happened so that Harry could sell various captured pirates and their ships – the former were stowed in holding cells of his ship, and the latter were attached with tow-ropes – as well as so that supplies like food, drink, gunpowder and soap could be restocked.

It is at this island that Harry and his family, his crew, and the crew of his son, saw his first 'wanted' poster.

"Not bad for just starting," Shanks commented with a smile, passing the poster over to his father.

"It doesn't even say _why_ I'm wanted though," Harry pointed out as he stared at it. "It just says 'highly dangerous man, wanted by the World Government, dead or alive, seventy-million belli."

"He's got a good point there," Mihawk said, taking the poster from Harry. "Nearly every other wanted poster has 'for piracy', or 'for terrorising civilians', or 'the destruction of World Government properties' or something similar."

"I suppose saying that he's wanted for being a 'sea-borne scallywag with too much money' wouldn't go over too well," Bellemere said, grinning around her cigarette.

Harry sighed. "Well, I'll see it doubled, at _least_, by the time we reach the end of this half of the Grand Line," he said, taking it back from Mihawk. "I _may_ even give them the satisfaction of being able to charge me with having done something terrible by then."

"Somehow doubt it," Shanks quipped, leaning his head on his hand. "You encourage everyone to follow their dreams, but you're just too much of a nice guy to ever let them do anything _bad_ to someone who's done nothing to provoke it."

Harry shrugged, allowing it and admitting silently that it was probably true. He just enjoyed being a scallywag too much.

~The End~

~Omake~

Harry held his head high as he looked over his crew. The kids had grown up, _his_ kids had grown up, and he was going on one-hundred-and-one now himself. The combination of magic in his blood, a healthy, active lifestyle, a balanced diet and Chopper and Kaya taking care of him as it was needed had given him a full life. He didn't look any older now than he did at seventy either, which was impressive.

"It has been an absolute treat to sail with all of you," he said with a smile. "It has been even more of an honour and a privilege to be permitted to be part of your lives. However, my time has come I think. I will wait for you all on the other side. Laboon," he said, turning to the now very large island whale, "will you be so kind as to take me back to Logue Town? It's only a few leagues north-east of here. I think I'm ready to go have a chat with Roger." Laboon carefully drew alongside the ship and held out a fin for Harry to climb on to.

"Dad," Shanks said quietly, wrapping an arm around Harry, preventing him from going yet. "You're still fit and healthy. Why are you so determined to -?"

Harry chuckled and lay an arm on his son's shoulder. "I promised myself I wouldn't ever let myself become a hundred-plus-year-old geezer with too many clever plans in my head. I'm a few days from being one-hundred-and-one. I incited the 'great pirate age' with Roger back in Logue Town all those, heh, _decades_ ago now. Shanks, look behind you. I am a _great-grandfather_."

This was true. Quite apart from all the kids that had been adopted into his family, and the kids that _they_ had adopted or produced, Shanks had actually had a son, who was currently carrying his own son on his shoulders as they farewelled the old man. Not one of them, Harry had been pleased to see, had even the faintest spark of magic in them – and he _had_ let them handle his wand, just to make sure.

"I have lived a full life and now I am old," he said. "I'm not going to live forever. I wouldn't do it if I could."

Shanks sniffed and wrapped his arms around his father firmly, desperately, not wanting to let him go. It had been one thing to go off to the Grand Line that first time, he had known that he would be able to see his father again. This though, this was so final. After all their adventures, all their 'scallywagging', his dad was going to leave him.

"Sir," Mihawk said, stepping forward. "Why Logue Town?"

"I got my first crew in Logue Town," Harry answered. "And this world has already farewelled one excellent man there. I _might_ have gone to Marineford, since it was so impressive, but we _did_ destroy it a couple of decades back with the revolutionaries, and I doubt that their rebuilding has got it up to its former glory just yet."

That got a chuckle at least from the people who were all standing with him.

"You're all welcome to come and watch if you like," Harry said. "Actually, I'd even appreciate it and be honoured if you would. I think I'd like to be burned once I'm dead, and my ashes scattered over every one of the Blues."

"We're all coming Dad," Shanks said, wiping at his eyes. "You and Laboon lead the way. We'll be right behind you."

"You couldn't _pay_ me to stay behind," Nami added fiercely.

"Yeah Harry-Oji," the chorus went around. "We're all coming!"

Even Shanks' crew wouldn't miss it. They'd all come to really respect the old man who just kept going, and who looked out of their captain.

Harry walked down the main street of Logue Town, his hands bound just like Roger's had been, and a cupful of mischief up his coat-sleeve – he had worn his very best things, clothes that he had ordered made just for official occasions, the weddings of his children before this, and of course one's own execution was about as official as something got. His feet were clad in polished black boots that folded over at the knee, and cream trousers that were tucked into them. He also wore a cream silk shirt, deep emerald green coat, and he'd gone so far as to swap out his usual old brown tricorn for a white one with gold edging and a deep emerald green feather, and his gold-rimmed glasses. He had even been permitted to wear his sword. When he reached his place on the scaffold, the officers asked for his last words.

Harry looked out over the crowd and saw his family near the back. Shanks, Mihawk, Bellemere, Gin, Ace, Zoro, Sanji, Nojiko, Luffy, Nami, Usopp, Kaya, even little Chopper, and so many others with them – his family had grown, and some of them were almost as old as him, even as others were barely into double-digits, and they were all still proud of him, and still standing straight, tall and strong. Even if he was a hundred years old, he had still watched over them, protected them when they needed him to, and he had not faulted in his duties to his family. He was going to miss them, if this was really to be his end.

"Actually, I've got a little speech, if that's alright?" he asked, reaching into the pocket of his coat with both of his bound hands, holding up a piece of folded paper between two fingers.

The officers frowned at each other, but nodded.

"Thank you," Harry said quietly before unfolding the paper. "My name is Potter Harry. I am a father, a grandfather and a great grandfather, and I love my family. My most recent bounty was posted as being for two-_billion_ belli, though there is no crime printed upon it that I should be wanted for, nor has there ever been since my very first wanted poster. Tomorrow, if I were to live to see it, unlikely at this point as that may seem, I would celebrate my one-hundred-and-first birthday."

"Are you quite done?" growled one of the officers.

"Just about," he said, dropping the paper into the crowd below. "I have known two Pirate Kings, the greatest swordsmen in all of the world, the best chefs, the finest mapmakers, the sharpest sharpshooters and the best doctors. I have tasted the sweetest fruit and fought every fight, never running away. I have no One Piece to tempt you with, and no D in my name, but I'll go out smiling all the same, old, content, and with no fear of death. I challenge you all here today: _top that_."

"Done now?" growled the other officer.

Harry shook his head at the impatience of these men and chuckled as he sat down, easing his wand out of one of his pockets as he did so. "_Verdimillious maximus_," he said, pointing up, causing green fireworks to erupt above him, a smile on his face.

Two spears were thrust into Harry's solar-plexus.

"Well that's just not good enough," Harry said quietly as he watched the blood seeped into his best green coat. "A slow death and a destroyed coat. I'm not pleased," he mumbled, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. "_Vulnera sanentur_," he whispered, the spell sending his blood back into his body and mending the wounds, though not the clothes. One of the few _spells_ that Snape had ever taught him – though inadvertently. "_Portus_," he breathed, touching a finger to the wooden shackles around his wrists, the tugging sensation hooking itself behind his navel and taking him away.

Moments later, he thumped down onto his own bed on board _The Dreamer_. It hurt, but he was in no danger of bleeding to death now, so he'd be fine... and it seemed that he was going to live to see his birthday.

Oh well, a promise made and a promise broken. It was only to himself, and Shanks would be glad to see that he'd changed his mind about it. Maybe working himself to death was better than a public execution anyway.

~The End~


End file.
